Dimensional study of the caging order parameter at the glass transition.

Charbonneau, Patrick

Ikeda, Atsushi

Parisi, Giorgio

Zamponi, Francesco

United States

2016-08-03T13:52:31Z

2012-08-28

The glass problem is notoriously hard and controversial. Even at the mean-field level, little is agreed upon regarding why a fluid becomes sluggish while exhibiting but unremarkable structural changes. It is clear, however, that the process involves self-caging, which provides an order parameter for the transition. It is also broadly assumed that this cage should have a gaussian shape in the mean-field limit. Here we show that this ansatz does not hold. By performing simulations as a function of spatial dimension d, we find the cage to keep a nontrivial form. Quantitative mean-field descriptions of the glass transition, such as mode-coupling theory, density functional theory, and replica theory, all miss this crucial element. Although the mean-field random first-order transition scenario of the glass transition is qualitatively supported here and non-mean-field corrections are found to remain small on decreasing d, reconsideration of its implementation is needed for it to result in a coherent description of experimental observations.

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22891303

1211825109

1091-6490

https://hdl.handle.net/10161/12602

eng

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences

Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A

10.1073/pnas.1211825109

Cold Temperature

Glass

Hydrodynamics

Models, Chemical

Molecular Dynamics Simulation

Normal Distribution

Phase Transition

Dimensional study of the caging order parameter at the glass transition.

Journal article

Charbonneau, Patrick|0000-0001-7174-0821

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/22891303

13939

13943

35

Chemistry

Duke

Physics

Trinity College of Arts & Sciences

Published

109