How to break the replica symmetry in structural glasses

TL;DR

This paper explores how the variational principle reveals the spontaneous breaking of replica symmetry in structural glasses, highlighting the emergence of self-generated disorder and the dominance of activated dynamics below a critical temperature.

Contribution

It introduces a self-consistent RFGLM framework with one-step RSB to analyze metastable states and symmetry breaking in structural glasses near the spinodal temperature.

Findings

Self-generated disorder arises spontaneously in the model.

Activated dynamics dominate below the spinodal temperature T_A.

The RFGLM framework captures metastable states without quenched disorder.

Abstract

The variational principle (VP) has been used to capture the metastable states of a glass-forming molecular system without quenched disorder. It has been shown that VP naturally leads to a self-consistent random field Ginzburg-Landau model (RFGLM). In the framework of one-step replica symmetry breaking (1-RSB) the general solution of RFGLM is discussed in the vicinity of the spinodal temperature T_{A} in terms of ``hidden'' formfactors $\tilde g(k)$, g_{0}(k) and $\Delta(k)$. The self-generated disorder spontaneously arises. It is argued that at T < T_{A} the activated dynamics is dominant.