Glassiness
(Dr Claudio Castelnovo|)
Another topic that interests me is understanding how exceptionally long relaxation time scales and glassy behavior arise in classical (and quantum) systems.
In collaboration with A. Ramanisisan, Dr. J. Schmit, and Prof. C. Chamon|, we studied the dynamics of a single chain polymer confined to a two dimensional cell, by modelling it via a kinetically constrained lattice model that preserves the connectivity of the chain. Even at densities close to fully-packing, we find that the monomers comprising the chain manage to diffuse around the box with a root mean square displacement of the order of the box dimensions over time scales for which the overall geometry of the polymer is, nevertheless, largely preserved. We investigated this shape persistence by introducing a new type of correlators involving the local tangent field, and we argue that the latter exhibits indeed glass-like behavior, despite the diffusive motion of the individual monomers.