Dynamical phase transitions in glasses induced by the ruggedness of the free energy landscape

TL;DR

This paper introduces damage spreading as a method to explore the ruggedness of free energy landscapes in glasses, linking it to dynamical phase transitions and Lyapunov exponents, with preliminary results on soft-sphere glasses.

Contribution

It proposes a novel approach using damage spreading to analyze topological features of free energy landscapes in glasses, extending theoretical frameworks to realistic systems.

Findings

Damage spreading correlates with the largest Lyapunov exponent.

Preliminary results show applicability to soft-sphere glasses.

Framework connects landscape ruggedness with dynamical phase transitions.

Abstract

We propose damage spreading (DS) as a tool to investigate the topological features related to the ruggedness of the free energy landscape. We argue that DS measures the positiveness of the largest Lyapunov exponent associated to the basins of attraction visited by the system during its dynamical evolution. We discuss recent results obtained in the framework of mode-coupling theory and comment how to extend them to the study of realistic glasses. Preliminary results are presented for purely repulsive soft-sphere glasses.