The melting of stable glasses is governed by nucleation-and-growth dynamics

TL;DR

This paper proposes that the melting of ultrastable glasses occurs via nucleation-and-growth dynamics near a hidden first-order phase transition, unifying various experimental observations and simulation results.

Contribution

It introduces a nucleation-and-growth framework for understanding ultrastable glass melting, linking it to a hidden phase transition and supported by simulation evidence.

Findings

Melting involves propagating fronts and large dynamic lengthscales.

Simulation results support nucleation-and-growth as the governing mechanism.

Ultrastable glasses' melting resembles crystal melting more than ordinary glasses.

Abstract

We discuss the microscopic mechanisms by which low-temperature amorphous states, such as ultrastable glasses, transform into equilibrium fluids, after a sudden temperature increase. Experiments suggest that this process is similar to the melting of crystals, thus differing from the behaviour found in ordinary glasses. We rationalize these observations using the physical idea that the transformation process takes place very close to a `hidden' equilibrium first-order phase transition, which is observed in systems of coupled replicas. We illustrate our views using simulation results for a simple two-dimensional plaquette spin model, which is known to exhibit a range of glassy behaviour. Our results suggest that nucleation-and-growth dynamics, as found near ordinary first-order transitions, is also the correct theoretical framework to analyse the melting of ultrastable glasses. Our approach provides a unified understanding of multiple experimental observations, such as propagating melting fronts, large kinetic stability ratios, and `giant' dynamic lengthscales.