Dynamical arrest in a geometric model for the glass transition

¹ University College Dublin, Irish Centre for Colloid Science and Biomaterials Department of Chemistry - Belfield Dublin 4, Ireland
² The Abdus Salam International Centre for Theoretical Physics Strada Costiera 11, 34100 Trieste, Italy

Corresponding authors: kenneth@fiachra.ucd.ie franz@ictp.trieste.it sellitto@ictp.trieste.it

Received: 2 June 2003
Accepted: 22 August 2003

Abstract

We investigate the nature of the slow relaxation in a three-dimensional lattice binary mixture with soft geometric constraints. We find that at high particle density the equilibrium relaxation time diverges with a super-Arrhenius law (like a double exponential of the inverse temperature), resulting in history-dependent properties typical of glassy relaxation. By a non-local Monte Carlo algorithm we equilibrate the system and determine its phase diagram in the temperature-density representation. The system exhibits a first-order melting transition line, and no apparent signature of the mean-field glassy scenario.