Probing a liquid to glass transition in equilibrium

TL;DR

This study uses computer simulations to explore how freezing particles in a liquid affects its transition to a glassy state, providing evidence for a phase transition driven by random pinning.

Contribution

It demonstrates that random pinning induces a glass transition in a simple fluid, supporting the existence of a random first order phase transition in equilibrium.

Findings

Evidence of a glass transition induced by random pinning

Consistency with a random first order phase transition at low temperatures

Finite size effects influence the transition behavior

Abstract

We use computer simulations to investigate the static properties of a simple glass-forming fluid in which the positions of a finite fraction of the particles has been frozen in. By probing the equilibrium distribution of the overlap between independent configurations of the liquid, we find strong evidence that this random pinning induces a glass transition. At low temperatures, our numerical findings are consistent with the existence of a random first order phase transition rounded by finite size effects.