Glass transition in the hard-sphere model. Relaxation effects

Abstract

The dependencies of a kinetic glass transition volume (V^k_g) for hard spheres, and the corresponding amorphous close-packed volume (V^k_a at infinite pressure (NkT/pV₀= 0), upon the number of spheres, the initial volume and the rate of compression, are examined in the context of two recently published conflicting viewpoints. Both V^k_g and V^k_a exhibit characteristic upper-bounds at the instantaneous-quench limit and decrease with reduced compression rates. The behaviour of V^k_g and V^k_a for slower compression rates, beyond the present resources of MD computation time, is uncertain. The possibility of lower-bounds to V^k_g and V^k_a associated with a quasi-thermodynamic transition as conjectured earlier, remains plausible.