We investigate the relaxation process and the dynamical heterogeneities of the kinetically constrained Kob--Anderson lattice glass model, and show that these are characterized by different timescales. The dynamics is well described within the diffusing defect paradigm, which suggest to relate the relaxation process to a reverse--percolation transition. This allows for a geometrical interpretation of the relaxation process, and of the different timescales.
We report on zero field cooled magnetization relaxation experiments on a concen- trated frozen ferrofluid exhibiting a low temperature superspin glass transition. With a method initially developed for spin glasses, we investigate the field dependence of the relaxations that take place after different aging times. We extract the typical number of correlated spins involved in the aging dynamics. This brings important insights into the dynamical correlation length and its time growth. Our results, consistent with expressions obtained for spin glasses, extend the generality of these behaviours to the class of superspin glasses. Since the typical flipping time is much larger for superspins than for atomic spins, our experiments probe a time regime much closer to that of numerical simulations.
We examined dynamic heterogeneity in a model tetrahedral network glass-forming liquid. We used four-point correlation functions to extract dynamic correlation lengths xi_4^a(t) and susceptibilities chi_4^a(t) corresponding to structural relaxation on two length scales a. One length scale corresponds to structural relaxation at nearest neighbor distances and the other corresponds to relaxation of the tetrahedral structure. We find that the dynamic correlation length xi_4^{a} grows much slower with increasing relaxation time than for model fragile glass formers. We also find that chi_4^a ~ (xi_4^a)^z for a range of temperatures, but z < 3 at the lowest temperatures examined in this study. However, we do find evidence that the temperature where Stokes-Einstein violation begins marks a temperature where there is a change in the character of dynamically heterogeneous regions. Throughout the paper, we contrast the structure and dynamics of a strong glass former with that of a representative fragile glass former.
We investigate the heterogeneous dynamics in a model, where chemical gelation and glass transition interplay, focusing on the dynamical susceptibility. Two independent mechanisms give raise to the correlations, which are manifested in the dynamical susceptibility: one is related to the presence of permanent clusters, while the other is due to the increase of particle crowding as the glass transition is approached. The superposition of these two mechanisms originates a variety of different behaviours. We show that these two mechanisms can be unentangled considering the wave vector dependence of the dynamical susceptibility.
We use computer simulation to investigate the topology of the potential energy $V({{bf R}})$ and to search for doublewell potentials (DWP) in a model glass . By a sequence of Newtonian and dissipative dynamics we find different minima of $V({{bf R}})$ and the energy profile along the least action paths joining them. At variance with previous suggestions, we find that the parameters describing the DWPs are correlated among each others. Moreover, the trajectory of the system in the 3$N$-d configurational phase space follows a quasi-1-d manifold. The motion parallel to the path is characterized by jumps between minima, and is nearly uncorrelated from the orthogonal, harmonic, dynamics.
We use X-Ray Photon Correlation Spectroscopy to investigate the structural relaxation process in a metallic glass on the atomic length scale. We report evidence for a dynamical crossover between the supercooled liquid phase and the metastable glassy state, suggesting different origins of the relaxation process across the transition. Furthermore, using different cooling rates we observe a complex hierarchy of dynamic processes characterized by distinct aging regimes. Strong analogies with the aging dynamics of soft glassy materials, such as gels and concentrated colloidal suspensions, point at stress relaxation as a universal mechanism driving the relaxation dynamics of out-of-equilibrium systems.