2024/02/07 by Ittai Fraenkel, Jorge Kurchan, Fraenkel, Ittai +3
Materials Science · #Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn) #FOS: Physical sciences #Material Dynamics and Properties
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2402.05081
openalex publication_date 2024/02/07 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
It is often stated that if one is presented with a snapshot of the positions of the molecules of a glass and one of a liquid, one is unable to tell the difference. Here we argue instead that given several such snapshots taken over a time-interval, even without specifying the times, there is a definite procedure to assess precisely the level of glassiness: it suffices to concatenate the snapshots side-by-side, and to subject the joint picture to a lossless compression protocol. We argue that the size of the compressed file yields a direct and unambiguous measure of the `vibrational' and `configurational' entropies, and may be used to study the associated glass length scale in or out of equilibrium through the size and frequency of the repeated motifs essential to the compression, a quantity that would diverge at a putative glass transition.