Quantum fluctuations can promote or inhibit glass formation

TL;DR

This paper explores how quantum fluctuations influence glass formation, revealing that they can either promote or inhibit vitrification depending on the regime, through theoretical and simulation insights.

Contribution

It introduces a new framework connecting quantum and classical vitrification, showing quantum fluctuations' dual role in glass formation.

Findings

Quantum fluctuations can promote glass formation in certain regimes.

Quantum fluctuations can inhibit glass formation in other regimes.

Distinct regions exist where quantum effects either facilitate or prevent vitrification.

Abstract

The very nature of glass is somewhat mysterious: while relaxation times in glasses are of sufficient magnitude that large-scale motion on the atomic level is essentially as slow as it is in the crystalline state, the structure of glass appears barely different than that of the liquid that produced it. Quantum mechanical systems ranging from electron liquids to superfluid helium appear to form glasses, but as yet no unifying framework exists connecting classical and quantum regimes of vitrification. Here we develop new insights from theory and simulation into the quantum glass transition that surprisingly reveal distinct regions where quantum fluctuations can either promote or inhibit glass formation.