Dynamical Facilitation Governs the Equilibration Dynamics of Glasses

Rahul Chacko (1) , François P. Landes (2, 3) , Giulio Biroli (4) , Olivier Dauchot (5) , Andrea Liu (1) , David Reichman (6)

1 University of Pennsylvania
2 TAU - TAckling the Underspecified
3 A&O - A&O (Apprentissage et Optimisation)
4 Systèmes Désordonnés et Applications
5 Gulliver (UMR 7083)
6 Columbia University [New York]

Convincing evidence of domain growth in the heating of ultrastable glasses suggests that the equilibration dynamics of super-cooled liquids could be driven by a nucleation and growth mechanism. We investigate this possibility by simulating the equilibration dynamics of a model glass during both heating and cooling between poorly and well-annealed states. Though we do observe the growth of domains during heating, we find that domains are absent during cooling. This absence is inconsistent with classical nucleation theory. By comparing the equilibration dynamics of our glass with that of two models with kinetic constraints, we demonstrate that dynamical facilitation generically leads to heating driven by domain growth and cooling without domains. Our results provide strong evidence that dynamical facilitation, not nucleation and interfacial-tension-driven domain growth, is the driving mechanism for the equilibration dynamics of glass-formers.

Mots clés: Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft); Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech); Chemical Physics (physics.chem-ph); FOS: Physical sciences

Domaines: Matière Molle [cond-mat.soft]

Rahul Chacko, François P. Landes, Giulio Biroli, Olivier Dauchot, Andrea Liu, et al.. Dynamical Facilitation Governs the Equilibration Dynamics of Glasses. 2024. ⟨hal-04379217⟩