The dimensional evolution of structure and dynamics in hard sphere liquids.

Abstract

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, however, remains unclear. These liquids indeed exhibit a complex interplay between structure and dynamics, and the importance of this interplay might only slowly diminish as dimension d increases. A careful numerical assessment of the matter has long been hindered by the exponential increase in computational costs with d. By revisiting a once common simulation technique involving the use of periodic boundary conditions modeled on Dd lattices, we here partly sidestep this difficulty, thus allowing the study of hard sphere liquids up to d = 13. Parallel efforts by Mangeat and Zamponi [Phys. Rev. E 93, 012609 (2016)] have expanded the mean-field description of glasses to finite d by leveraging the standard liquid-state theory and, thus, help bridge the gap from the other direction. The relatively smooth evolution of both the structure and dynamics across the d gap allows us to relate the two approaches and to identify some of the missing features that a finite-d theory of glasses might hope to include to achieve near quantitative agreement.