| II. Slow dynamics of supercooled liquids and glasses If a glass-forming liquid is cooled sufficiently fast, it becomes a supercooled liquid without crystallizing. As a supercooled liquid is cooled to lower temperature, it becomes an amorphous solid, that is, a glass. The liquid-glass transition is one of most difficult problems in statistical physics, although it has been considerably studied by experimental, theoretical, and computational works. In our laboratory we study the slow dynamics of colloidal supercooled liquids and colloidal glasses. Figures (A) and (B) show the numerical results obtained by solving the nonlinear stochastic Tokuyama equation for equilibrium density fluctuations in a colloidal suspension [1,2,3,4,5,6]. Figure (C) shows how the spatial pattern of glassy phase (colored blue), projected onto a plane, develops in time (t) in the liquid phase (colored white) when the colloidal suspension is initially in a nonequilibrium supercooled state. [7]. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
(A) Snapshots of equilibrium density fluctuations |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
 ,the supercooled state for  , and the liquid state for  are colored red, green, and light blue, respectively, where and .(B) Density profile
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
The solid horizontal line indicates  , respectively. The details are the same as in Figure (A).
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
  |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| Time evolution of glassy phase in a nonequilibrium supercooled liquid. (a) t=1, (b) t=850, (c) t=3000, (d) t=400000 |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
(D) Time evolution of snapshots of equilibrium density fluctuations.(click here) |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
References [1] Michio Tokuyama and Irwin Oppenheim, Physical Review E 50 (1994) R16-19; Physica A 216 (1995) 85-119. [2] Michio Tokuyama, Physical Review E 62 (2000) R5915-5918; Physica A 289 (2001) 57-85. [3] Michio Tokuyama, Physica A 294 (2001) 23-43. [4] Michio Tokuyama, Yayoi Terada, and Irwin Oppenheim, Physica A 307 (2002) 27-40. [5] Michio Tokuyama, Yayoi Terada, and Irwin Oppenheim, EPJ E 9 (2002) 271-275. [6] Michio Tokuyama, Yayoi Terada, and Irwin Oppenheim, Physica A 321(2003) 193-206 . [7] Michio Tokuyama, Yoshihisa Enomoto, and Irwin Oppenheim, Physica A 270 (1999) 380-402. |
|||||||||||||||||||||||||||
