Constrained Boltzmann-Gibbs measures and effective potential for glasses in hypernetted chain approximation and numerical simulations

TL;DR

This paper introduces an effective potential approach within the hypernetted chain approximation to study glassy freezing in simple liquids, successfully capturing key features of the transition observed in simulations.

Contribution

It develops a novel method using constrained equilibrium measures in HNC approximation to analyze glass transitions, bridging liquid theory and spin glass models.

Findings

Freezing is naturally incorporated in the HNC approximation.

The transition exhibits features similar to mean-field spin glass models.

Qualitative agreement with Monte Carlo simulations confirms the approach's validity.

Abstract

By means of an effective potential associated to a constrained equilibrium measure and apt to study frozen systems, we investigate glassy freezing in simple liquids in the hypernetted chain (HNC) approximation. Differently from other classical approximations of liquid theory, freezing is naturally embedded in the HNC approximation. We get a detailed description of the freezing transition that is analogous to the one got in a large class of mean-field long range spin glass. We compare our findings with Monte Carlo simulations of the same system and conclude that many of the qualitative features of the transition are captured by the approximated theory.