Laboratoire Matière et Systèmes Complexes

Some insights on structural glasses from mean-field theory

Thibaud Maimbourg

Abstract: Capturing the non-equilibrium dynamics of interacting systems is arguably one of the greatest challenges in modern physics, where we lack a unified and efficient description of physical phenomena, compared to equilibrium situations where thermodynamics applies. This has justified the focus on particular -but paradigmatic- classes of systems. One of them is glasses, which are amorphous solids with intriguing experimental features. They exhibit a wealth of phenomena in their out-of-equilibrium dynamics (through e.g. a quench or an external drive, such as a shear strain or an active self-propulsion) at low temperatures. Another such feature occurs at even lower temperatures, where quantum effects start to play a role: thermodynamic quantities display an anomalous behaviour with respect to what one expects from standard (ordered) solids. I will first give a short overview of the mean-field theory of structural glasses, able to unify many physical situations (dense liquids, soft and hard colloids, granular materials, emulsions) and transitions in the same conceptual framework. Then I will review recent results deriving from these ideas to the above-mentioned examples. Time permitting I will discuss effective Gibbs equilibrium and its breakdown in the steady state of driven-dissipative interacting spin systems, modelling nuclear magnetic resonance protocols.

Wednesday March 4 at 12:00 in room 646A