Related Experiment Video
Updated: Jul 17, 2026

Cooling Rate Dependent Ellipsometry Measurements to Determine the Dynamics of Thin Glassy Films
Published on: January 26, 2016
Test of nonequilibrium thermodynamics in glassy systems: the soft-sphere case
E La Nave1, F Sciortino, P Tartaglia
1Dipartimento di Fisica, INFM UdR, Università di Roma La Sapienza, Piazzate Aldo Moro 5, I-00185 Rome, Italy.
Abstract:
The scaling properties of the soft-sphere potential allow the derivation of an exact expression for the pressure of a frozen liquid, i.e., the pressure corresponding to configurations which are local minima in its multidimensional potential energy landscape. The existence of such a relation offers the unique possibility for testing the recently proposed extension of the liquid free energy to glassy out-of-equilibrium conditions and the associated expression for the temperature of the configurational degrees of freedom. We demonstrate that the nonequilibrium free energy provides an exact description of the soft-sphere pressure in glass states.
Related Concept Videos
Entropy
Third Law of Thermodynamics
Kinetic Theory of an Ideal Gas
The number of molecules in one mole is called Avogadro's number...
Thermodynamic Systems
Consider an example of tea boiling in a kettle. The tea and...
Absolute Entropies and the Third Law of Thermodynamics
Thermodynamic Properties of Ideal Solutions

