2026/05/31 by Fabio Leoni, Misaki Ozawa, John Russo +2
Chemistry · Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Physical and Chemical Molecular Interactions #Amorphous solid #Exploit #Key (lock) #Material Dynamics and Properties #Metallic Glasses and Amorphous Alloys #Realization (probability) #Stability (learning theory) #Supercooling #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1063/5.0341332
published as The Journal of Chemical Physics, 165, 031001 (2026)
openalex publication_date 2026/07/21 · openalex created_date 2026/07/22 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/31 · arxiv created 2026/08/04 · arxiv updated 2026/08/05
Ultrastable glasses, amorphous solids with exceptionally low-energy states and enhanced kinetic, thermodynamic, and mechanical stability, have long been a subject of intense experimental interest. Over the past decade, their computational realization has emerged as a major goal in condensed matter physics, as numerical methods can exploit unphysical moves to access deeply supercooled and nonequilibrium glassy states far beyond the reach of conventional cooling protocols, thereby providing key insights into the nature of the glass transition and amorphous states and enabling the design of mechanically robust glassy materials. In this review, we outline the key steps underlying the most effective algorithms developed across the field. For each approach, we discuss its efficiency, limitations, and physical interpretation. We finally present a comparative analysis of the stability achieved across these methods, with the aim of equipping both newcomers and experts with an intuitive and comprehensive understanding of the field's current state and the opportunities it presents.