Glassy slowdown and replica-symmetry-breaking instantons

TL;DR

This paper models the slowdown in glass-forming liquids using replica-symmetry-breaking instantons within an effective field theory, linking instanton structure to glassy dynamics and point-to-set correlations.

Contribution

It demonstrates that replica-symmetry-breaking instantons dominate in the effective theory, offering new insights into the structural and dynamical properties of glasses.

Findings

Replica-symmetry-breaking instantons dominate over a wide parameter range.

Instanton structure encodes the point-to-set correlation length.

The model provides a detailed view of glassy relaxation mechanisms.

Abstract

Glass-forming liquids exhibit a dramatic dynamical slowdown as the temperature is lowered. This can be attributed to relaxation proceeding via large structural rearrangements whose characteristic size increases as the system cools. These cooperative rearrangements are well modeled by instantons in a replica effective field theory, with the size of the dominant instanton encoding the liquid's cavity point-to-set correlation length. Varying the parameters of the effective theory corresponds to varying the statistics of the underlying free-energy landscape. We demonstrate that, for a wide range of parameters, replica-symmetry-breaking instantons dominate. The detailed structure of the dominant instanton provides a rich window into point-to-set correlations and glassy dynamics.