title: Probing a critical length scale at the glass transition.
abstract: We give evidence of a clear structural signature of the glass transition, in terms of a static correlation length with the same dependence on the system size, which is typical of critical phenomena. Our approach is to introduce an external, static perturbation to extract the structural information from the system's response. In particular, we consider the transformation behavior of the local minima of the underlying potential energy landscape (inherent structures), under a static deformation. The finite-size scaling analysis of our numerical results indicate that the correlation length diverges at a temperature Tc, below the temperatures where the system can be equilibrated. Our numerical results are consistent with random first order theory, which predicts such a divergence with a critical exponent ν=2/3 at the Kauzmann temperature, where the extrapolated configurational entropy vanishes.
authors.affiliation: Polymer Physics, ETH Zürich, Department of Materials, CH-8093 Zürich, Switzerland.
authors.forename: Majid
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Mosayebi
authors.forename: Emanuela
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Del Gado
authors.forename: Patrick
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Ilg
authors.forename: Hans Christian
authors.initials: HC
authors.lastname: Ottinger