Statistical Mechanics of the Glass Transition

H. G. E. Hentschel, Valery Ilyin, Nataliya Makedonska, Itamar Procaccia, Nurith Schupper

Published 2006-08-20Version 1

The statistical mechanics of simple glass forming systems in 2 dimensions is worked out. The glass disorder is encoded via a Voronoi tessellation, and the statistical mechanics is performed directly in this encoding. The theory provides, without free parameters, an explanation of the glass transition phenomenology, including the identification of two different temperatures, $T_g$ and $T_k$, the first associated with jamming and the second associated with the appearance of a quasi-crystal at very low temperatures.