Seminar

The most conspicuous aspect of the phenomenon referred to as ”the glass transition” is the dramatical increase in relaxation time of a supercooled liquid (10 − 14 orders of magnitude) upon a modest reduction of temperature. A major theoretical question is whether the tremendous increase in relaxation time is accompanied by an increase in a typical static lengthscale similar to critical phenomena. Standard molecular dynamics techniques and most other protocols are limited in the available relaxation times ( 4 − 5 orders of magnitude) making it impossible to simulate a liquid cold enough to demonstrate a significant increase in lengthscale. Our work[1] employs a swap Monte Carlo approach that allows us to reach an unprecedented lengthscale growth of more than 500%, associated with an increase in relaxation time of 15 orders of magnitude. It is therefore the first time that a temperature regime comparable to experiments was explored in simulation. [1] R. Gutiérrez, S. Karmakar, Y. G. Pollack and I. Procaccia, Euro. Phys. Lett. 111, 56009 (2015).