Brownian dynamics: from glassy to trivial

Hugo Jacquin, Bongsoo Kim, Kyozi Kawasaki, Frédéric Van Wijland

Published 2012-06-07, updated 2014-04-09Version 3

We endow a system of interacting particles with two distinct, local, Markovian and reversible microscopic dynamics. Using common field-theoretic techniques used to investigate the presence of a glass transition, we find that while the first, standard, dynamical rules lead to glassy behavior, the other one leads to a simple exponential relaxation towards equilibrium. This finding questions the intrinsic link that exists between the underlying, thermodynamical, energy landscape, and the dynamical rules with which this landscape is explored by the system. Our peculiar choice of dynam- ical rules offers the possibility of a direct connection with replica theory, and our findings therefore call for a clarification of the interplay between replica theory and the underlying dynamics of the system.