{
  "id": "cond-mat/0606669",
  "version": "v1",
  "published": "2006-06-26T22:40:47.000Z",
  "updated": "2006-06-26T22:40:47.000Z",
  "title": "Excitation Chains at the Glass Transition",
  "authors": [
    "J. S. Langer"
  ],
  "comment": "4 pages, no figures",
  "doi": "10.1103/PhysRevLett.97.115704",
  "categories": [
    "cond-mat.stat-mech",
    "cond-mat.mtrl-sci"
  ],
  "abstract": "The excitation-chain theory of the glass transition, proposed in an earlier publication, predicts diverging, super-Arrhenius relaxation times and, {\\it via} a similarly diverging length scale, suggests a way of understanding the relations between dynamic and thermodynamic properties of glass-forming liquids. I argue here that critically large excitation chains play a role roughly analogous to that played by critical clusters in the droplet model of vapor condensation. The chains necessarily induce spatial heterogeneities in the equilibrium states of glassy systems; and these heterogeneities may be related to stretched-exponential relaxation. Unlike a first-order condensation point in a vapor, the glass transition is not a conventional phase transformation, and may not be a thermodynamic transition at all.",
  "revisions": [
    {
      "version": "v1",
      "updated": "2006-06-26T22:40:47.000Z"
    }
  ],
  "analyses": {
    "keywords": [
      "glass transition",
      "chains necessarily induce spatial heterogeneities",
      "critically large excitation chains play",
      "super-arrhenius relaxation times",
      "conventional phase transformation"
    ],
    "tags": [
      "journal article"
    ],
    "publication": {
      "publisher": "APS",
      "journal": "Phys. Rev. Lett."
    },
    "note": {
      "typesetting": "TeX",
      "pages": 4,
      "language": "en",
      "license": "arXiv",
      "status": "editable"
    }
  }
}