Clusters and Fluctuations at Mean-Field Critical Points and Spinodals

Abstract

We show that the structure of the fluctuations close to spinodals and mean-field critical points is qualitatively different than the structure close to non-mean-field critical points. This difference has important implications for many areas including the formation of glasses in supercooled liquids. In particular, the divergence of the measured static structure function in near-mean-field systems close to the glass transition is suppressed relative to the mean-field prediction in systems for which a spatial symmetry is broken.

5 pages, 1 figure

References in corpus (1)

• Molecular Dynamics Study of Long-Lived Structures in a Fragile Glass Forming Liquid

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Polymer Glass Formation: Role of Activation Free Energy, Configurational Entropy, and Collective Motion
• The structure of fluctuations near mean-field critical points and spinodals and its implication for physical processes
• Glass and polycrystal states in a lattice spin model
• The instability of Alexander-McTague crystals and its implication for nucleation