Probing a critical length scale at the glass transition

TL;DR

This paper provides evidence of a critical structural length scale at the glass transition, showing a divergence at a specific temperature through finite-size scaling of the system's response to static perturbations.

Contribution

It introduces a novel static perturbation method to identify a diverging correlation length at the glass transition, supporting critical phenomena theories.

Findings

Correlation length diverges at temperature T_c

Finite-size scaling indicates critical behavior

Results align with random first order transition theory

Abstract

We give evidence of a clear structural signature of the glass transition, in terms of a static correlation length with the same dependence on the system size which is typical of critical phenomena. Our approach is to introduce an external, static perturbation to extract the structural information from the system's response. In particular, we consider the transformation behavior of the local minima of the underlying potential energy landscape (inherent structures), under a static deformation. The finite-size scaling analysis of our numerical results indicate that the correlation length diverges at a temperature $T_c$, below the temperatures here the system can be equilibrated. Our numerical results are consistent with random first order theory, which predicts such a divergence with a critical exponent $\nu=2/3$ at the Kauzmann temperature, where the extrapolated configurational entropy vanishes.