Real Space Renormalization Group Theory of Disordered Models of Glasses

TL;DR

This paper introduces a real space renormalisation group approach to disordered glass models, identifying fixed points related to liquid, critical, and glass states, and explaining the glass transition as an avoided phase transition.

Contribution

It develops a novel RG analysis for disordered glass models, revealing fixed points and explaining the glass transition as an avoided phase transition.

Findings

Identifies three fixed points: liquid, critical, and glass states.

Explains the growth of activation energy and relaxation time near the glass transition.

Shows that the glass transition is an avoided phase transition.

Abstract

We develop a real space renormalisation group analysis of disordered models of glasses, in particular of the spin models at the origin of the Random First Order Transition theory. We find three fixed points respectively associated to the liquid state, to the critical behavior and to the glass state. The latter two are zero-temperature ones; this provides a natural explanation of the growth of effective activation energy scale and the concomitant huge increase of relaxation time approaching the glass transition. The lower critical dimension depends on the nature of the interacting degrees of freedom and is higher than three for all models. This does not prevent three dimensional systems from being glassy. Indeed, we find that their renormalisation group flow is affected by the fixed points existing in higher dimension and in consequence is non-trivial. Within our theoretical framework the glass transition results to be an avoided phase transition.