School on glass formers and glasses
Giulio Biroli Lectures

14 & 15 January, 2010

The Random First Order Transition Theory

Abstract

The Random First Order Transition Theory (RFOT) is one of the most promising approaches to explain the glass transition. During my lectures I will explain and present this theory. The plan I shall follow is:

- Some motivations from experiments and simulations.

- Complex free energy landscape and the entropy vanishing transition: general analysis and examples.

- Dynamical Mode Coupling Transition.

- Beyond Mean-Field Theory: entropy driven cluster melting and the real space description of RFOT.

- RFOT: old and new predictions; missing pieces and loose ends.

Discussion: I list below some possible topics:

  1. Growing length-scales: difference and relation between static and dynamical length scales; difference and relation between the notion of dynamical correlation and cooperativity.
  2. RFOT: Possible smoking gun experiments and comparison with other theories.

 

References and suggested reading

  1. G. Biroli and J.-P. Bouchaud, http://arxiv.org/abs/0912.2542
  2. A. Cavagna, Physics Report 476, 51 (2009) http://arxiv.org/abs/0903.4264
  3. M. Mezard and G. Parisi, http://arxiv.org/abs/0910.2838