Medium-Range Order, Density Fluctuations, and Activated Relaxation in the Equilibrated Deep Glass Regime
Phys. Rev. Lett. 134, 256101 – Published 25 June, 2025
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/66zz-y23m
Abstract
A successful microscopic theory of activated relaxation in metastable supercooled liquids is extended to the equilibrated deep glass regime. Surprisingly, the predicted power-law scaling connections of the dynamic barrier with diverse scalar order parameters (medium-range order correlation length, dimensionless compressibility, shear modulus) remain unchanged up to astronomically long timescales, despite a fundamental crossover of equilibrium thermodynamics and structure near the laboratory kinetic vitrification point. Quantitative tests against experiments on aged to equilibrium glass-forming liquids up to nearly 20 decades in time scale reveal good agreement. This conflicts with the idea of a crossover from super-Arrhenius to literal Arrhenius relaxation around the laboratory glass transition temperature, and supports the robustness of the theoretical idea that ultraslow dynamics is causally related to medium-range structural order. New avenues of experimental and theoretical research in the deep glass regime are suggested.
