Specific Heat Anomaly in a Supercooled Liquid with Amorphous Boundary Conditions

MÁRTIN, DANIEL A; CAVAGNA, A.; GRIGERA, T. S.

PHYSICAL REVIEW LETTERS

AMER PHYSICAL SOC

Lugar: New York; Año: 2015 vol. 114 p. 225901 - 225901

0031-9007

We study the specific heat of a model supercooled liquid confined in a spherical cavity with amorphous boundary conditions. We find the equilibrium specific heat has a cavity-size-dependent peak as a function of temperature. The cavity allows us to perform a finite-size scaling (FSS) analysis, which indicates that the peak persists at a finite temperature in the thermodynamic limit. We attempt to collapse the data onto a FSS curve according to different theoretical scenarios, obtaining reasonable results in two cases: a ?not-so-simple? liquid with nonstandard values of the exponents α and ν, and random first-order theory, with two different length scales.