2008/04/13 by Prasanta Pal, Corey S. O’Hern, Corey S. O'Hern +5
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Glass properties and applications #Material Dynamics and Properties #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.78.011111
published as Phys. Rev. E 78, 011111 (2008) · 4 pages, 4 figures
arxiv created 2008/04/13 · openalex publication_date 2008/07/16 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
To elucidate slow dynamics in glassy materials, we introduce the figure-8 model in which N hard blocks undergo Brownian motion around a circuit in the shape of a figure 8. This system undergoes kinetic arrest at a critical packing fraction \ensuremathφ=\ensuremathφg<1, and for \ensuremathφ\ensuremath≈\ensuremathφg long-time diffusion is controlled by rare, cooperative, ``junction-crossing'' particle rearrangements. We find that the average time between junction crossings \ensuremathτJC, and hence the structural relaxation time, does not simply scale with the configurational volume \ensuremathΩc of transition states, because \ensuremathτJC also depends on the time to complete a junction crossing. The importance of these results in understanding cage-breaking dynamics in glassy systems is discussed.