Activated Bond-Breaking Processes Preempt the Observation of a Sharp Glass-Glass Transition in Dense Short-Ranged Attractive Colloids

2003/04/30 by Emanuela Zaccarelli, Giuseppe Foffi, Francesco Sciortino +2 · 1 citation
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Glass properties and applications #Material Dynamics and Properties #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.soft

paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.91.108301

published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 91, 108301 (2003) · 4 pages, 3 figures; final version

openalex publication_date 2003/09/02 · arxiv created 2003/09/26 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

Abstract

We study-using molecular dynamics simulations-the temperature dependence of the dynamics in a dense short-ranged attractive colloidal glass to find evidence of the kinetic glass-glass transition predicted by the ideal mode coupling theory. According to the theory, the two distinct glasses are stabilized, one by excluded volume and the other by short-ranged attractive interactions. By studying the density autocorrelation functions, we discover that the short-ranged attractive glass is unstable. Indeed, activated bond-breaking processes slowly convert the attractive glass into the hard-sphere one, preempting the observation of a sharp glass-glass transition.

Citations

• Logarithmic relaxation in glass-forming systems
• Higher-order glass-transition singularities in systems with short-ranged attractive potentials
• Higher-order glass-transition singularities in colloidal systems with attractive interactions

Cited by

• Evidence of a Higher-Order Singularity in Dense Short-Ranged Attractive Colloids