Glasses and aging: A Statistical Mechanics Perspective

Abstract

We review the field of the glass transition, glassy dynamics and aging from a statistical mechanics perspective. We give a brief introduction to the subject and explain the main phenomenology encountered in glassy systems, with a particular emphasis on spatially heterogeneous dynamics. We review the main theoretical approaches currently available to account for these glassy phenomena, including recent developments regarding mean-field theory of liquids and glasses, novel computational tools, and connections to the jamming transition. Finally, the physics of aging and off-equilibrium dynamics exhibited by glassy materials is discussed.

50 pages, 24 figs. This is an updated version of a chapter initially written in 2009 for the Encyclopedia of Complexity and Systems Science (Springer). arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1011.2578

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