Glassiness in Uniformly Frustrated Systems

Abstract

We review several models of glassy systems where the randomness is self generated, i.e. already an infinitesimal amount of disorder is sufficient to cause a transition to a non-ergodic, glassy state. We discuss the application of the replica formalism developed for the spin glass systems to study the glass transition in uniformly frustrated many-body systems. Here a localization in configuration space emerges leading to an entropy crisis of the system. Using a combination of density functional theory and Landau theory of the glassy state, we first analyze the mean field glass transition within the saddle point approximation. We go beyond the saddle point approximation by considering the energy fluctuations around the saddle point and evaluate the barrier height distribution.

16 pages, 6 figures, review article to appear in ""Structural Glasses and Supercooled Liquids: Theory, Experiment, and Applications", (edited by P. Wolynes, John Wiley & Sons, 2010)