Equivalence of glass transition and colloidal glass transition in the hard-sphere limit

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that the dynamics slowing in various glass-forming liquids converges to the hard-sphere glass transition in the low-pressure limit, revealing universal behavior when scaled by temperature over pressure.

Contribution

It establishes the equivalence between glass transition and colloidal glass transition in the hard-sphere limit and identifies universal scaling behavior across different systems.

Findings

Universal relaxation time behavior as a function of T/p at low pressure

Deviations from universality at higher pressures depending on inter-particle potential

Collapse of molecular dynamics data onto a single curve in the low-pressure limit

Abstract

We show that the slowing of the dynamics in simulations of several model glass-forming liquids is equivalent to the hard-sphere glass transition in the low-pressure limit. In this limit, we find universal behavior of the relaxation time by collapsing molecular-dynamics data for all systems studied onto a single curve as a function of $T/p$, the ratio of the temperature to the pressure. At higher pressures, there are deviations from this universal behavior that depend on the inter-particle potential, implying that additional physical processes must enter into the dynamics of glass-formation.