Random Pinning Glass Transition: Hallmarks, Mean-Field Theory and Renormalization Group Analysis

TL;DR

This paper investigates the glass transition caused by randomly pinning particles, combining mean-field theory and renormalization group analysis to understand critical behavior and physical differences from other pinning methods.

Contribution

It develops a mean-field and renormalization group framework for understanding the random pinning glass transition, highlighting key physical distinctions from other pinning approaches.

Findings

Identifies critical behavior in three dimensions via renormalization group.

Highlights differences between random pinning and high-temperature pinning.

Discusses potential numerical and experimental tests.

Abstract

We present a detailed analysis of glass transitions induced by pinning particles at random from an equilibrium configuration. We first develop a mean-field analysis based on the study of p-spin spherical disordered models and then obtain the three dimensional critical behavior by the Migdal-Kadanoff real space renormalization group method. We unveil the important physical differences with the case in which particles are pinned from a random (or very high temperature) configuration. We contrast the pinning particles approach to the ones based on biasing dynamical trajectories with respect to their activity and on coupling to equilibrium configurations. Finally, we discuss numerical and experimental tests.