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Do binary hard disks exhibit an ideal glass transition?
Aleksandar Donev1, Frank H Stillinger, Salvatore Torquato
1Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.
Physical Review Letters
|June 29, 2006
Summary
This study shows that an ideal glass transition does not exist in binary hard-disk mixtures. Configurational entropy is not zero for amorphous glasses, challenging existing theories of glassy states.
Area of Science:
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Materials Science
- Statistical Mechanics
Background:
- The concept of an ideal glass transition is crucial for understanding amorphous solids.
- Previous theoretical and numerical estimates often assume zero configurational entropy for ideal amorphous glasses.
Purpose of the Study:
- To investigate the existence of an ideal glass transition in a binary hard-disk mixture.
- To challenge the assumption of zero configurational entropy for ideal amorphous glasses.
Main Methods:
- Explicit construction of an exponential number of jammed packings.
- Exploration of densities across the spectrum from glassy to crystalline states.
Main Results:
- Demonstration that an ideal glass transition is absent in binary hard-disk mixtures.
- Configurational entropy is non-zero for amorphous glassy states.
Conclusions:
- The ideal glass transition concept, as previously defined, is not applicable to binary hard-disk systems.
- This finding has implications for the theoretical understanding of glassy states and phase transitions.