Quasi-equilibrium in glassy dynamics: a liquid theory approach

TL;DR

This paper develops a quasi-equilibrium formalism for liquids to derive long-time dynamical equations for glassy systems, connecting equilibrium approximations with aging and Mode-Coupling theory.

Contribution

It introduces a unified framework that extends equilibrium liquid theories to describe long-time glassy and aging dynamics, including a generalization of the HNC approximation.

Findings

HNC approximation yields equations similar to MCT in the long-time limit.

Szamel's closure reproduces the exact MCT equations for equilibrium dynamics.

The formalism describes both high-temperature glassy and low-temperature aging behaviors.

Abstract

We introduce a quasi-equilibrium formalism in the theory of liquids in order to obtain a set of coarse grained long time dynamical equations for the two point density correlation functions. Our scheme allows to use typical approximations devised for equilibrium to study long time glassy dynamics. We study the Hypernetted Chain (HNC) approximation and a recent closure scheme by Szamel. In both cases we get dynamical equations that have the structure of the Mode-Coupling (MCT) equations in the long time region. The HNC approach, that was so far used to get equilibrium quantities is thus generalized to a fully consistent scheme where long-time dynamic quantities can also be computed. In the context of this approximation we get an asymptotic description of both equilibrium glassy dynamics at high temperature and of aging dynamics at low temperature. The Szamel approximation on the other hand is shown to lead to the exact Mode Coupling equation of G\"otze for equilibrium dynamics. We clarify the way phase space is sampled according to MCT during dynamical relaxation.