Nonlinear response of soft-sphere glasses to external fields
Prof. Dr. Jürgen Horbach (Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf)

The nonlinear response of supercooled liquids and glasses to external fields has been in the focus of recent research revealing a wealth of novel phenomena. The study of these phenomena on a microcopic level may result in a better understanding of the nature of the glass transition. By applying external fields to glassforming systems below the glass transition temperature, relaxation processes can be studied under well-defined conditions, e.g.~by investigating the relaxation of a sheared system to a quiescent glass state after switching off the shear field. In this talk, results of molecular dynamics computer simulations of a simple soft-sphere model are presented to reveal the response of glasses to shear fields as well as the single-particle response to a constant force (non-linear active micro-rheology).