Thermodynamics of glasses: a first principles computation

Abstract

We propose a first principles computation of the thermodynamics of simple fragile glasses starting from the two-body interatomic potential. A replica formulation translates this problem into that of a gas of interacting molecules, each molecule being build of m atoms, and having a gyration radius (related to the cage size) which vanishes at zero temperature. We use a small cage expansion, valid at low temperatures, which allows us to compute the cage size, the specific heat (which follows the Dulong-Petit law) and the configurational entropy.