We show that finite-size scaling techniques can be employed to study the glass transition. Our results follow from the postulate of a diverging dynamical correlation length at the glass transition whose physical manifestation is the presence of dynamical heterogeneities. We introduce a parameter B(T,L) whose temperature, T, and system size, L, dependences permit a precise location of the glass ...

We demonstrate that a fluidized bed of hard spheres undergoes a glass transition during defluidization. As in other glass-forming systems, the dynamics of the bed becomes heterogeneous as the transition is approached; spatial and temporal correlation scales increase rapidly. Microscopic motion persists in the glass state, but the bed can be jammed (all motion arrested) by application of a small...

With sufficient high cooling rates, a variety of liquids, including metallic melts, will cross a glass transition temperature and solidify into glass accompanying a marked increase of the shear viscosity in approximately 17 orders of magnitude. Because of the intricate atomic structure and dynamic behaviours of liquid, it is yet difficult to capture the underlying structural mechanism responsib...

We have studied critical phenomena of spin glass transition for larger Dzyaloshinsky-Moriya anisotropy Heisenberg spin glass system, PtMn. The analysis of nonlinear magnetizations in the framework of the existence of a phase transition at Tg yields the critical exponents  = 2.5 ± 0.3,  = 1.5 ± 0.3 and  = 1 ± 0.3. These results suggest that the universality class of spin glass transition on P...

We apply conformal solution theory and extend to mixtures a recently derived equation of state for glass-forming liquids. The equation of state is based on the statistical properties of the multidimensional potential energy surface as a function of a macroscopic system’s degrees of freedom (energy landscape), and allows the calculation of an ideal glass transition locus, along which the configu...

Glasses acquire their solid-like properties by cooling from the supercooled liquid via a continuous transition known as the glass transition. Recent research on soft glasses indicates that besides temperature, another route to liquify glasses is by application of stress that drives relaxation and flow. Here, we show that unlike the continuous glass transition, the failure of glasses to applied ...

Glass transition is accompanied by a rapid growth of the structural relaxation time and a concomitant decrease of configurational entropy. It remains unclear whether the transition has a thermodynamic origin, and whether the dynamic arrest is associated with the growth of a certain static order. Using granular packing as a model hard-sphere glass, we show the glass transition as a thermodynamic...

We report extensive numerical simulations in the glass region for a simple model of short-ranged attractive colloids, the square well model. We investigate the behavior of the density autocorrelation function and of the static structure factor in the region of temperatures and packing fractions where a glass-glass transition is expected according to theoretical predictions. We strengthen our ob...

– In the framework of schematic hard spheres lattice models for granular media we investigate the phenomenon of the " jamming transition ". In particular, using Edwards' approach, by analytical calculations at a mean field level, we derive the system phase diagram and show that " jamming " corresponds to a phase transition from a " fluid " to a " glassy " phase, observed when crystallization is...

The remarkable kinetic slowdown experienced by liquids as they are cooled toward their glass transition is not accompanied by any obvious structural change. Understanding the origin of this behavior is a major scientific challenge. At present, this area of condensed matter theory is characterized by an abundance of divergent viewpoints that attempt to describe well-defined physical phenomena. W...