Physics (Internal)

Universally slow: Aging in glassy systems

This event is part of the Condensed Matter Theory Seminar Series.

Abstract:  Glassy systems are ubiquitous in nature, from window
glasses, through the anomalous magnetic properties of spin-glasses, to
memory effects observed in electronic systems. Among their key
properties are slow relaxations to equilibrium without a typical
timescale and aging, the dependence of relaxation on the system's age.
Understanding these phenomena is a long-standing problem in physics.
After reviewing aging in various physical systems, I will describe our
approach to the problem, and show how it leads to a particular form of
aging, corroborated in various experimental systems such as electron
glasses, porous semiconductors and structural glasses. The aging
results from a broad distribution of relaxation rates, which within
the theoretical framework are the eigenmodes of a linearized dynamical
matrix. Finally, I will discuss recent results on the structure and
localization properties of these relaxation eigenmodes, and their
implications.