Thermodynamics of Glasses: A First Principles Computation

Marc Mézard, Giorgio Parisi
1999 Physical Review Letters  
We propose a first principle computation of the thermodynamics of simple fragile glasses starting from the two body interatomic potential. A replica formulation translates this problem into that of a gas of interacting molecules, each molecule being built of m atoms, and having a gyration radius (related to the cage size) which vanishes at zero temperature. We use a small cage expansion, valid at low temperatures, which allows to compute the cage size, the specific heat (which follows the Dulong and Petit law), and the configurational entropy.
doi:10.1103/physrevlett.82.747 fatcat:btbq37uor5fx3p44itfkvgo4tm