Computational Methods towards Ultrastable Glasses

TL;DR

This review discusses computational algorithms for creating ultrastable glasses, highlighting their efficiency, limitations, and physical insights to advance understanding and design of stable amorphous materials.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive comparison of key computational methods for ultrastable glasses, emphasizing their physical interpretations and stability outcomes.

Findings

Algorithms can access deeply supercooled states beyond traditional cooling.

Different methods vary in efficiency and stability achieved.

The review offers a unified understanding of computational approaches in the field.

Abstract

Ultrastable glasses, amorphous solids with exceptionally low-energy states and enhanced kinetic, thermodynamic and mechanical stability, have long been a subject of intense experimental interest. Over the past decade, their computational realization has emerged as a major goal in condensed matter physics, as numerical methods can exploit unphysical moves to access deeply supercooled and nonequilibrium glassy states far beyond the reach of conventional cooling protocols, thereby providing key insights into the nature of the glass transition and amorphous states and enabling the design of mechanically robust glassy materials. In this review, we outline the key steps underlying the most effective algorithms developed across the field. For each approach, we discuss its efficiency, limitations, and physical interpretation. We finally present a comparative analysis of the stability achieved across these methods, with the aim of equipping both newcomers and experts with an intuitive and comprehensive understanding of the field's current state and the opportunities it presents.