ETH Polymer Physics seminar


2011-09-22
11:00 at HIF E 19

Structural Relaxation and Correlation Length Scales in Glass Forming Liquids

Srikanth Sastry

Jawaharlal Nehru Center for Advanced Scientific Research

The rapid rise of structural relaxation times in supercooled liquids upon decreasing temperature, and their transformation to an amorphous solid state (the glass transition), display many puzzles which have eluded a satisfactory explanation despite decades of experimental and theoretical investigation. A key mystery is the role of structural or other lengthscales in determining dynamical slow down. The conventional view holds that lengthscales associated with structural ordering do not grow appreciably as the glass transition is approached. Nevertheless, the role of growing static and dynamical length scales in determining relaxation times in glass forming liquids has received increasing attention in recent years. New insights into spatial correlations in structure and dynamics, and their relationship with the rapid rise of relaxation times in glass forming liquids, obtained via computer simulations of model liquids, will be described. Specific issues addressed will be the relationship of the short and long time relaxation and corresponding length scales, the validity of the Adam-Gibbs relation and the breakdown of the Stokes-Einstein relation in different spatial dimensions.


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