Deconstructing the Structural Glass Transition Through Experiments on Colloidal Suspensions

The dramatic slowing down of dynamics, without a concomitant change in structure, as a liquid approaches the glassy state is perhaps the most-puzzling and enduring problem in condensed matter physics [1]. While there exist many competing theoretical frameworks that attempt to explain the slowing down, distinguishing between them in atomic/molecular experiments continues to remain a challenge. This talk will describe results from particle-resolved colloid experiments that allowed us to critically assess competing theoretical frameworks of the glass transition [2,3]. We will show that the dynamical slowing down is accompanied by a growth in ‘amorphous order’. We will show that the amorphous order is associated with domains that rearrange cooperatively and quantify the interfacial tension of amorphous-amorphous interfaces [4].

Towards the end of my talk, I will describe results on encoding and retrieval of mechanical memory in sheared amorphous solids [5].

References
[1] ShreyasGokhale, A K Sood and Rajesh Ganapathy, Advances in Physics 65, 363 (2016)
[2] Hima K Nagamanasa, ShreyasGokhale, A K Sood and Rajesh Ganapathy, Nature Physics 11, 403 (2015)
[3] ShreyasGokhale, Hima K Nagamanasa, Rajesh Ganapathy and A K Sood, Nature Communications 5, 4685 (2014)
[4] DivyaGanapathi, A K Sood and Rajesh Ganapathy (submitted 2017)
[5] SrimayeeMukherji, A K Sood and Rajesh Ganapathy (in preparation, 2017)