PIRSA:12080001

Glass: The Cinderella Problem of Condensed Matter Physics

Leggett, A. (2012). Glass: The Cinderella Problem of Condensed Matter Physics. Perimeter Institute. https://pirsa.org/12080001

Leggett, Anthony. Glass: The Cinderella Problem of Condensed Matter Physics. Perimeter Institute, Aug. 03, 2012, https://pirsa.org/12080001 

          @misc{ pirsa_PIRSA:12080001,
            doi = {10.48660/12080001},
            url = {https://pirsa.org/12080001},
            author = {Leggett, Anthony},
            keywords = {Condensed Matter},
            language = {en},
            title = {Glass: The Cinderella Problem of Condensed Matter Physics},
            publisher = {Perimeter Institute},
            year = {2012},
            month = {aug},
            note = {PIRSA:12080001 see, \url{https://pirsa.org}}
          }

Anthony Leggett University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign

DOI 10.48660/12080001
Collection
Talk Type Scientific Series
Subject

Abstract

Amorphous materials (glasses) probably constitute >90% of the solid matter surrounding us in everyday life,yet traditional textbooks of condensed matter physics devote virtually no space to them.Crudely speaking,the puzzles in the behavior of glasses can be divided into three major areas:the glass transition itself,the characteristic long-term memory effects and the near-equilibrium thermal,dielectric and transport properties;this talk focusses entirely on the third area.Over the last 40 years it has become apparent that the thermal and transport properties are not only qualitatively universal between glasses with totally different chemistry and microstructure,but in some cases possess a truly mind-boggling degree of _quantitative_ universality.In this talk I will describe the salient experimental data,review the established ("tunnelling two-level system") model commonly used to interpret them,and introduce a rather different scenario (developed in collaboration with D.C.Vural) which holds out some prospect of explaining the  universalities in a natural way.