Glass transition in hard-core fluids and beyond, using an effective static structure in the mode coupling theory

• Published in: The European physical journal. E, Soft matter and biological physics Vol. 40; no. 2; pp. 17 - 12
• Main Authors: Amokrane, S., Tchangnwa Nya, F., Ndjaka, J. M.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01.02.2017; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Biological and Medical Physics; Biophysics; Complex Fluids and Microfluidics; Complex Systems; Condensed matter physics; Glass transition; Nanotechnology; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Polymer Sciences; Regular Article; Soft and Granular Matter; Surfaces and Interfaces; Thin Films; Flowing Matter: Liquids and Complex Fluids
• ISSN: 1292-8941; 1292-895X
• DOI: 10.1140/epje/i2017-11506-8

. The dynamical arrest in classical fluids is studied using a simple modification of the mode coupling theory (MCT) aimed at correcting its overestimation of the tendency to glass formation while preserving its overall structure. As in previous attempts, the modification is based on the idea of tempering the static pair correlations used as input. It is implemented in this work by computing the static structure at a different state point than the one used to solve the MCT equation for the intermediate scattering function, using the pure hard-sphere glass for calibration. The location of the glass transition predicted from this modification is found to agree with simulations data for a variety of systems --pure fluids and mixtures with either purely repulsive interaction potentials or ones with attractive contributions. Besides improving the predictions in the long-time limit, and so reducing the non-ergodicity domain, the same modification works as well for the time-dependent correlators. Graphical abstract