A tentative Replica Study of the Glass Transition

TL;DR

This paper introduces a replicated hypernetted chain approach to study the glass transition in particle systems, identifying a transition to the glass phase but with inaccuracies in energy and specific heat predictions.

Contribution

It presents a novel replicated hypernetted chain method to analyze the glass transition without quenched disorder, highlighting its potential and current limitations.

Findings

Signals a transition to the glass phase in particle systems

Predicts the transition using replicated equations

Identifies inaccuracies in energy and specific heat predictions

Abstract

We propose a method to study quantitatively the glass transition in a system of interacting particles. In spite of the absence of any quenched disorder, we introduce a replicated version of the hypernetted chain equations. The solution of these equations, for hard or soft spheres, signals a transition to the glass phase. However the predicted value of the energy and specific heat in the glass phase are wrong, calling for an improvement of this method.