Glass transition of hard sphere systems: molecular dynamics and density functional theory

The glass transition of a hard sphere system is investigated within the framework of the density functional theory (DFT). Molecular dynamics (MD) simulations are performed to study the dynamical behavior of the system on the one hand and to provide the data to produce the density field for the DFT on the other hand. Energy landscape analysis based on the DFT shows that there appears a metastable (local) free energy minimum representing an amorphous state as the density is increased. This state turns out to become stable, compared with the uniform liquid, at some density around which we also observe a sharp slowing down of the alpha relaxation in the MD simulations.