Tuning the fragility of a glassforming liquid by curving space

TL;DR

This study explores how space curvature influences the fragility and dynamic heterogeneities of a model glassformer, revealing that reducing frustration through curvature tuning can control the system's relaxation dynamics.

Contribution

It demonstrates that space curvature can be used to tune the fragility of glassformers and links dynamic heterogeneities to topological defects caused by frustration.

Findings

Fragility increases as frustration decreases.

Space curvature effectively tunes the fragility of the system.

Dynamic heterogeneities are connected to topological defects.

Abstract

We investigate the influence of space curvature, and of the associated "frustration", on the dynamics of a model glassformer: a monatomic liquid on the hyperbolic plane. We find that the system's fragility, i.e. the sensitivity of the relaxation time to temperature changes, increases as one decreases the frustration. As a result, curving space provides a way to tune fragility and make it as large as wanted. We also show that the nature of the emerging "dynamic heterogeneities", another distinctive feature of slowly relaxing systems, is directly connected to the presence of frustration-induced topological defects.