How Do Glassy Domains Grow?

Abstract

We construct equations for the growth kinetics of structural glass within mode-coupling theory, through a nonstationary variant of the three-density correlator defined by G. Biroli et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 97, 195701 (2006)]. We solve a schematic form of the resulting equations to obtain the coarsening of the three-point correlator chi(3)(t, t(w)) as a function of waiting time tw. For a quench into the glass, we find that chi(3) attains a peak value similar to t(w)(0.5) at t - t(w) similar to t(w)(0.8), providing a theoretical basis for the numerical observations of Parisi [J. Phys. Chem. B 103, 4128 (1999)] and Kob and Barrat [Phys. Rev. Lett. 78, 4581 (1997)]. The aging is not ``simpleā€³: the t(w) dependence cannot be attributed to an evolving effective temperature.

Publication
PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS 109, (2012).
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