Density of States of Colloidal Glasses

Antina Ghosh, Vijayakumar K. Chikkadi, Peter Schall, Jorge Kurchan, Daniel Bonn
2010 Physical Review Letters  
Glasses are structurally liquid-like, but mechanically solid-like. Most attempts to understand glasses start from liquid state theory. Here we take the opposite point of view, and use concepts from solid state physics. We determine the vibrational modes of a colloidal glass experimentally, and find soft low-frequency modes that are very different in nature from the usual acoustic vibrations of ordinary solids. These modes extend over surprisingly large length scales.
doi:10.1103/physrevlett.104.248305 pmid:20867344 fatcat:5cpvh46p3neuvjsjild3nqehae