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GLASS PHYSICS

Locality resolved

Nature Physics volume 18, pages 614–615 (2022)Cite this article

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Two-dimensional model glasses exhibit characteristics in their low-frequency vibrational density of states that can be traced to the quasilocalized dynamics of string-like objects. This finding provides an explanation for a universal feature of glasses known as the boson peak.

Glasses are ubiquitous in daily life, yet their physical nature has remained elusive. Apart from their use as a commodity, the notion of glasses ‘being disordered’ and the perception of a glass as a ‘liquid trapped in a solid’ have fascinated generations of scientists. Indeed, in contrast to crystals, glasses exhibit atomic disorder — instead of arranging into a periodic lattice, the atoms forming the material are frozen into place when the parent liquid is cooled sufficiently fast and deep enough below its liquid-to-solid transition temperature1. Finding a theoretical framework that can cover the full complexity of the glassy state has been an ongoing challenge in condensed matter physics and is yet to be resolved.

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Fig. 1: Glassy disorder and string-like, quasilocalized excitations.

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  1. Otto Schott Institute of Materials Research, University of Jena, Jena, Germany

    Lothar Wondraczek

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  1. Lothar Wondraczek
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Correspondence to Lothar Wondraczek.

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Wondraczek, L. Locality resolved. Nat. Phys. 18, 614–615 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01636-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01636-6

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