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Updated: Aug 16, 2026

Cooling Rate Dependent Ellipsometry Measurements to Determine the Dynamics of Thin Glassy Films
Published on: January 26, 2016
Space-time thermodynamics of the glass transition
Mauro Merolle1, Juan P Garrahan, David Chandler
1Department of Chemistry, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-1460, USA.
Abstract:
We consider the probability distribution for fluctuations in dynamical action and similar quantities related to dynamic heterogeneity. We argue that the so-called "glass transition" is a manifestation of low action tails in these distributions where the entropy of trajectory space is subextensive in time. These low action tails are a consequence of dynamic heterogeneity and an indication of phase coexistence in trajectory space. The glass transition, where the system falls out of equilibrium, is then an order-disorder phenomenon in space-time occurring at a temperature T(g), which is a weak function of measurement time. We illustrate our perspective ideas with facilitated lattice models and note how these ideas apply more generally.
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