title: The structural origin of the hard-sphere glass transition in granular packing.
abstract: Glass transition is accompanied by a rapid growth of the structural relaxation time and a concomitant decrease of configurational entropy. It remains unclear whether the transition has a thermodynamic origin, and whether the dynamic arrest is associated with the growth of a certain static order. Using granular packing as a model hard-sphere glass, we show the glass transition as a thermodynamic phase transition with a 'hidden' polytetrahedral order. This polytetrahedral order is spatially correlated with the slow dynamics. It is geometrically frustrated and has a peculiar fractal dimension. Additionally, as the packing fraction increases, its growth follows an entropy-driven nucleation process, similar to that of the random first-order transition theory. Our study essentially identifies a long-sought-after structural glass order in hard-sphere glasses.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dong Chuan Road, Shanghai 200240, China.
authors.forename: Chengjie
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Xia
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dong Chuan Road, Shanghai 200240, China.
authors.forename: Jindong
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Li
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dong Chuan Road, Shanghai 200240, China.
authors.forename: Yixin
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Cao
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dong Chuan Road, Shanghai 200240, China.
authors.forename: Binquan
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Kou
authors.affiliation: Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 South Cass Avenue, Argonne, Illinois 60439, USA.
authors.forename: Xianghui
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.affiliation: Advanced Photon Source, Argonne National Laboratory, 9700 South Cass Avenue, Argonne, Illinois 60439, USA.
authors.forename: Kamel
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Fezzaa
authors.affiliation: Shanghai Institute of Applied Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai 201800, China.
authors.forename: Tiqiao
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Xiao
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, 800 Dong Chuan Road, Shanghai 200240, China.|Collaborative Innovation Center of Advanced Microstructures, Nanjing University, Nanjing 210093, China.
authors.forename: Yujie
authors.initials: Y
authors.lastname: Wang