What is it about?
A glass is an amorphous solid that combines structural characteristics of a liquid with the resistance to deformation of a crystalline solid. Glasses form when a liquid is cooled rapidly enough to prevent crystallization, thereby preserving its disordered structure. For more than 80 years, researchers have been intrigued by the question of whether an “ideal glass” exists—a glass that can be obtained from a liquid through a well-defined thermodynamic transition, analogous to the liquid–gas transition. If such a transition exists, the ideal glass could be considered a fourth state of matter, alongside gases, liquids, and crystalline solids. In our work, we present, for the first time, a numerical technique that enables us to cool liquids all the way to zero temperature and directly observe the transition to an ideal glass.
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Why is it important?
Our findings represent an important milestone toward establishing the ideal glass as a fourth state of matter, providing new insights into one of the fundamental questions in condensed matter physics.
Perspectives
I find it fascinating that glasses are such an integral part of our everyday lives—from windows and packaging materials to smartphone displays—yet we still lack a fundamental understanding of many of their most basic properties. With this work, I hope to contribute to closing a longstanding gap in our understanding of glass.
Gerhard Jung
Universitat Innsbruck
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Numerical investigation of the equilibrium Kauzmann transition in a two-dimensional atomistic glass, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 2026, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2612355123.
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