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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Nov 13, 2025

Methods of Ex Situ and In Situ Investigations of Structural Transformations: The Case of Crystallization of Metallic Glasses

Methods of Ex Situ and In Situ Investigations of Structural Transformations: The Case of Crystallization of Metallic Glasses

Published on: June 7, 2018

Internally Stressed and Positionally Disordered Minimal Complexes Yield Glasslike Nonphononic Excitations.

Avraham Moriel¹

¹Chemical & Biological Physics Department, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 7610001, Israel.

Physical Review Letters

|March 12, 2021

Summary

Glasses possess unique low-frequency excitations. Minimal complexes, disordered and frustrated structures, are identified as the key physical ingredients generating these glasslike excitations.

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Area of Science:

Condensed matter physics
Materials science
Statistical mechanics

Background:

Glasses exhibit unique low-frequency nonphononic excitations with a universal D(ω)∼ω⁴ density of states.
Understanding the origins of these excitations is challenging due to the interplay of positional disorder and mechanical frustration in glass formation.

Purpose of the Study:

To identify the minimal physical ingredients responsible for generating glasslike excitations in amorphous solids.
To investigate the roles of mechanical frustration and positional disorder in vibrational spectra.

Main Methods:

Analysis of vibrational spectra of isolated minimal complexes.
Computational modeling of ensembles of minimal complexes.
Embedding single minimal complexes within perfect lattices.

Main Results:

Minimal complexes, characterized by mechanical frustration and positional disorder, were identified as key structural motifs.
Ensembles of marginally stable minimal complexes were shown to produce the universal D(ω)∼ω⁴ density of states.
The emergence of glasslike excitations was demonstrated by incorporating minimal complexes into crystalline lattices.

Conclusions:

Minimal complexes provide a fundamental, first-principles framework for understanding glasslike excitations.
This work offers a practical computational approach for introducing glasslike excitations into solid materials.