Kauzmann Paradox: a crossover due to diminishing local excitations

TL;DR

This paper investigates the Kauzmann paradox in supercooled liquids, proposing a resolution involving a smooth entropy crossover driven by diminishing local excitations, supported by lattice glass models.

Contribution

It introduces lattice glass models that demonstrate a smooth entropy turn at low temperatures, offering a potential resolution to the Kauzmann paradox.

Findings

Entropy turns smoothly at low temperatures in the models.

Disappearance of local excitations correlates with entropy reduction.

Ground states are disordered but have zero entropy per particle.

Abstract

The configurational entropy of supercooled liquids extrapolates to zero at the Kauzmann temperature, causing a crisis called the Kauzmann paradox. Here, using a class of multicomponent lattice glass models, we study a resolution of the paradox characterized by a sudden but smooth turn in the entropy as temperature goes sufficiently low. A scalar variant of the models reproduces the Kauzmann paradox with thermodynamic properties at very low temperatures dominated by correlations. An exactly solvable vector variant without correlation illustrates that a sudden entropy turn occurs when discrete local excitations are largely suppressed. Despite being disordered and infinitely degenerate, the ground states have zero entropy per particle.