The melting of stable glasses is governed by nucleation-and-growth dynamics
arXiv:1603.05017 · doi:10.1063/1.4954327
Abstract
We discuss the microscopic mechanisms by which low-temperature amorphous states, such as ultrastable glasses, transform into equilibrium fluids, after a sudden temperature increase. Experiments suggest that this process is similar to the melting of crystals, thus differing from the behaviour found in ordinary glasses. We rationalize these observations using the physical idea that the transformation process takes place very close to a `hidden' equilibrium first-order phase transition, which is observed in systems of coupled replicas. We illustrate our views using simulation results for a simple two-dimensional plaquette spin model, which is known to exhibit a range of glassy behaviour. Our results suggest that nucleation-and-growth dynamics, as found near ordinary first-order transitions, is also the correct theoretical framework to analyse the melting of ultrastable glasses. Our approach provides a unified understanding of multiple experimental observations, such as propagating melting fronts, large kinetic stability ratios, and `giant' dynamic lengthscales.
15 pages, 9 figs
References in corpus (14)
- Theoretical perspective on the glass transition and amorphous materials
- Dynamic first-order phase transition in kinetically constrained models of glasses
- First-order dynamical phase transition in models of glasses: an approach based on ensembles of histories
- Facets of glass physics
- Suppression of tunneling two-level systems in ultrastable glasses of indomethacin
- Hiding Quiet Solutions in Random Constraint Satisfaction Problems
- Macroscopic Facilitation of Glassy Relaxation Kinetics: Ultra Stable Glass Films with Front-Like Thermal Response
- One micron length scale controls kinetic stability of low energy glasses
- Evidence for a disordered critical point in a glass-forming liquid
- Caging and mosaic lengthscales in plaquette spin models of glasses
- Equilibrium ultrastable glasses produced by random pinning
- Glassy dynamics as a melting process (On melting dynamics and the glass transition, Part II)
- Glassy aspects of melting dynamics (On melting dynamics and the glass transition, Part I)
- Fluctuation-dissipation relations in plaquette spin systems with multi-stage relaxation
Cited by in corpus (14)
- Perspective: Highly stable vapor-deposited glasses
- Density controls the kinetic stability of ultrastable glasses
- How to "measure" a structural relaxation time that is too long to be measured?
- Experimental evidence of a crossover between cooperative relaxation and liquid growth dynamics
- Two-step devitrification of ultrastable glasses
- Front-mediated melting of ultrastable glasses
- Real-time microscopic view of the relaxation of a glass
- Front propagation in ultrastable glasses is dynamically heterogeneous
- Dynamical Facilitation Governs the Equilibration Dynamics of Glasses
- Thermal vestiges of avalanches in the driven random field Ising model
- Machine learning glass caging order parameters with an artificial nested neural network
- Quench dynamics of a dissipative Rydberg gas in the classical and quantum regime
- Pole Analysis of the Inter-Replica Correlation Function in a Two-Replica System as a Binary Mixture: Mean Overlap in the Cluster Glass Phase
- Dynamic scaling and stochastic fractal in nucleation and growth processes