A localization transition underlies the mode-coupling crossover of glasses

Daniele Coslovich (1) , Andrea Saverio Ninarello , Ludovic Berthier (1)

1 L2C - Laboratoire Charles Coulomb

We study the equilibrium statistical properties of the potential energy landscape of several glass models in a temperature regime so far inaccessible to computer simulations. We show that unstable modes of the stationary points undergo a localization transition in real space close to the mode-coupling crossover temperature determined from the dynamics. The concentration of localized unstable modes found at low temperature is a non-universal, finite dimensional feature not captured by mean-field glass theory. Our analysis reconciles, and considerably expands, previous conflicting numerical results and provides a characteristic temperature for glassy dynamics that unambiguously locates the mode-coupling crossover.

Domaines: Mécanique statistique [cond-mat.stat-mech]; Systèmes désordonnés et réseaux de neurones [cond-mat.dis-nn]

Daniele Coslovich, Andrea Saverio Ninarello, Ludovic Berthier. A localization transition underlies the mode-coupling crossover of glasses. SciPost Physics, 2019, pp.77. ⟨10.21468/SciPostPhys.7.6.077⟩. ⟨hal-02445176⟩