No Arabic abstract
Multiple relaxation channels often arise in the dynamics of liquids where the momentum current associated to the particle-conservation law splits into distinct contributions. Examples are strongly confined liquids for which the currents in lateral and longitudinal direction to the walls are very different, or fluids of nonspherical particles with distinct relaxation patterns for translational and rotational degrees of freedom. Here, we perform an asymptotic analysis of the slow structural relaxation close to kinetic arrest as described by mode-coupling theory (MCT) with several relaxation channels. Compared to standard MCT, the presence of multiple relaxation channels significantly changes the structure of the underlying equations of motion and leads to additional, non-trivial terms in the asymptotic solution. We show that the solution can be rescaled, and thus prove that the well-known $ beta $-scaling equation of MCT remains valid even in the presence of multiple relaxation channels. The asymptotic treatment is validated using a novel schematic model. We demonstrate that the numerical solution of this schematic model can indeed be described by the derived asymptotic scaling laws close to kinetic arrest. Additionally, clear traces of the existence of two distinct decay channels are found in the low-frequency susceptibility spectrum, suggesting that clear footprints of the additional relaxation channels can in principle be detected in simulations or experiments of confined or molecular liquids.
The only available quantitative description of the slowing down of the dynamics upon approaching the glass transition has been, so far, the mode-coupling theory, developed in the 80s by Gotze and collaborators. The standard derivation of this theory does not result from a systematic expansion. We present a field theoretic formulation that arrives at very similar mode-coupling equation but which is based on a variational principle and on a controlled expansion in a small dimensioneless parameter. Our approach applies to such physical systems as colloids interacting via a mildly repulsive potential. It can in principle, with moderate efforts, be extended to higher orders and to multipoint correlation functions.
We consider the stationary state of a fluid comprised of inelastic hard spheres or disks under the influence of a random, momentum-conserving external force. Starting from the microscopic description of the dynamics, we derive a nonlinear equation of motion for the coherent scattering function in two and three space dimensions. A glass transition is observed for all coefficients of restitution, epsilon, at a critical packing fraction, phi_c(epsilon), below random close packing. The divergence of timescales at the glass-transition implies a dependence on compression rate upon further increase of the density - similar to the cooling rate dependence of a thermal glass. The critical dynamics for coherent motion as well as tagged particle dynamics is analyzed and shown to be non-universal with exponents depending on space dimension and degree of dissipation.
We present an extensive treatment of the generalized mode-coupling theory (GMCT) of the glass transition, which seeks to describe the dynamics of glass-forming liquids using only static structural information as input. This theory amounts to an infinite hierarchy of coupled equations for multi-point density correlations, the lowest-order closure of which is equivalent to standard mode-coupling theory. Here we focus on simplified schematic GMCT hierarchies, which lack any explicit wavevector-dependence and therefore allow for greater analytical and numerical tractability. For one particular schematic model, we derive the unique analytic solution of the infinite hierarchy, and demonstrate that closing the hierarchy at finite order leads to uniform convergence as the closure level increases. We also show numerically that a similarly robust convergence pattern emerges for more generic schematic GMCT models, suggesting that the GMCT framework is generally convergent, even though no small parameter exists in the theory. Finally, we discuss how different effective weights on the high-order contributions ultimately control whether the transition is continuous, discontinuous, or strictly avoided, providing new means to relate structure to dynamics in glass-forming systems.
For reaction-diffusion processes with at most bimolecular reactants, we derive well-behaved, numerically tractable, exact Langevin equations that govern a stochastic variable related to the response field in field theory. Using duality relations, we show how the particle number and other quantities of interest can be computed. Our work clarifies long-standing conceptual issues encountered in field-theoretical approaches and paves the way for systematic numerical and theoretical analyses of reaction-diffusion problems.
The entropy production rate (EPR) offers a quantitative measure of time reversal symmetry breaking in non-equilibrium systems. It can be defined either at particle level or at the level of coarse-grained fields such as density; the EPR for the latter quantifies the extent to which these coarse-grained fields behave irreversibly. In this work, we first develop a general method to compute the EPR of scalar Langevin field theories with additive noise. This large class of theories includes acti