Understanding the problem of glass transition on the basis of elastic interactions in a liquid

TL;DR

This paper reviews an elastic interaction-based approach to understanding the glass transition, explaining key phenomena like relaxation laws, dynamic crossovers, and fragility through the increasing range of elastic interactions as temperature decreases.

Contribution

It introduces a physically transparent elastic interaction model that explains multiple fundamental aspects of the glass transition, including relaxation behavior and the absence of divergence in relaxation time.

Findings

Explains the physical origin of relaxation cooperativity.

Accounts for the crossover from exponential to non-exponential relaxation.

Derives the Vogel-Fulcher-Tammann law from elastic interactions.

Abstract

We review the recently proposed elastic approach to glass transition. This approach is based on a simple and a physically transparent idea of elastic interactions between local relaxation events in a liquid. Central to this picture is the range of this interaction. Its increase on lowering the temperature explains several important open questions in the area of glass transition, including universal relaxation laws and dynamic crossovers. In particular, we show how the proposed theory explains (1) the physical origin of cooperativity of relaxation; (2) the origin of the crossover from exponential to non-exponential relaxation at $\tau=$1 ps, where $\tau$ is liquid relaxation time; (3) the origin of the Vogel-Fulcher-Tammann law; (4) the origin of stretched-exponential relaxation; (5) the absence of divergence of $\tau$ at the VFT temperature $T_0$ and the crossover to a more Arrhenius relaxation at $\tau\approx 10^{-6}$ sec; (6) the origin of liquid ``fragility''; and (7) the relationship between non-exponentiality of relaxation and relaxation time.