Related papers: Glasses: a new view from QED coherence
The aim of this paper is to discuss some basic notions regarding generic glass forming systems composed of particles interacting via soft potentials. Excluding explicitly hard-core interaction we discuss the so called `glass transition' in…
Key to resolving the scientific challenge of the glass transition is to understand the origin of the massive increase in viscosity of liquids cooled below their melting temperature (avoiding crystallisation). A number of competing and often…
We review a model--based rather than phenomenological approach to low--temperature anomalies in glasses. Specifically, we present a solvable model inspired by spin--glass theory that exhibits both, a glassy low--temperature phase, and a…
The nature of the glass transition is theoretically understood in the mean-field limit of infinite spatial dimensions, but the problem remains totally open in physical dimensions. Nontrivial finite-dimensional fluctuations are hard to…
Ising spin glasses in a transverse field exhibit a zero temperature quantum phase transition, which is driven by quantum rather than thermal fluctuations. They constitute a universality class that is significantly different from the…
It is a persistent problem in condensed matter physics that glasses exhibit vibrational and thermal properties that are markedly different from those of crystals. While recent works have advanced our understanding of vibrational excitations…
The formulation of the mean-field, infinite-dimensional solution of hard sphere glasses is a significant milestone for theoretical physics. How relevant this description might be for understanding low-dimensional glass-forming liquids,…
In these lectures, we develop the theory of the Colour Glass Condensate. This is the matter made of gluons in the high density environment characteristic of deep inelastic scattering or hadron-hadron collisions at very high energy. The…
Temperature chaos is a striking phenomenon in spin glasses, where even slight changes in temperature lead to a complete reconfiguration of the spin state. Another intriguing effect is the reentrant transition, in which lowering the…
We use computer simulations to study the glass transition of dense fluids made of polydisperse, repulsive spheres. For hard particles, we vary the volume fraction, phi, and use compressible particles to explore finite temperatures, T>0. In…
Glasses are ubiquitous in daily life and technology. However the microscopic mechanisms generating this state of matter remain subject to debate: Glasses are considered either as merely hyper-viscous liquids or as resulting from a genuine…
We study a recently introduced model of one-component glass-forming liquids whose constituents interact with anisotropic potential. This system is interesting per-se and as a model of liquids like glycerol (interacting via hydrogen bonds)…
Performing light scattering experiments we show that introducing short-ranged attraction to a colloidal suspension of nearly hard spheres by addition of free polymer produces new glass transition phenomena. We observe a dramatic…
The glass transition temperature and its connection to statistical properties of confined and free-standing polymer films of varying thickness containing unentangled to highly entangled bead-spring chains are studied by molecular dynamics…
Glass-to-glass and liquid-to-liquid phase transitions are observed in bulk and confined water, with or without applied pressure. They result from the competition of two liquid phases separated by an enthalpy difference depending on…
The interplay of slow dynamics and thermodynamic features of dense liquids is studied by examinining how the glass transition changes depending on the presence or absence of Lennard-Jones-like attractions. Quite different thermodynamic…
We investigate numerically the low temperature equilibration of glassy systems via non-local Monte Carlo methods. We re-examine several systems that have been studied previously and investigate new systems in order to test the performance…
We provide a theoretical perspective on the glass transition in molecular liquids at thermal equilibrium, on the spatially heterogeneous and aging dynamics of disordered materials, and on the rheology of soft glassy materials. We start with…
Melting is well understood in terms of the Lindemann criterion, essentially stating that crystalline materials melt when the thermal vibrations of their atoms become such vigorous that they shake themselves free of the binding forces.…
Understanding glass formation is a challenge because the existence of a true glass state, distinct from liquid and solid, remains elusive: Glasses are liquids that have become too viscous to flow. An old idea, as yet unproven…