Year: 2019
Type: article
Abstract: Liquids cooled towards the glass transition temperature transform into amorphous solids that have a wide range of applications. While the nature of this transformation is understood rigorously in the mean-field limit of infinite spatial dimensions, the problem remains wide open in physical dimensions. Nontrivial finite-dimensional fluctuations are hard to control analytically, and experiments fail to provide conclusive evidence regarding the nature of the glass transition. Here, we develop Monte Carlo methods for two-dimensional glass-forming liquids that allow us to access equilibrium states at sufficiently low temperatures to directly probe the glass transition in a regime inaccessible to experiments. We find that the liquid state terminates at a thermodynamic glass transition which occurs at zero temperature and is associated with an entropy crisis and a diverging static correlation length. Our results thus demonstrate that a thermodynamic glass transition can occur in finite dimensional glass-formers.
Source: Nature Communications
Language: English
Subfield: Materials Chemistry
Field: Materials Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: gold
Estimated APC paid: $5,200
Funder: Simons Foundation
Awards: G1781090824, G2406285159
OpenAlex ID: W2803386344