Universal fluctuations in the relaxation of structural glasses

Abstract

The presence of strong local fluctuations -- dynamical heterogeneities -- has been observed near the glass transitions of a wide variety of materials. Here we explore the possible presence of universality in those fluctuations. We compare the statistical properties of fluctuations obtained from numerical simulations of four different glass-forming systems: two polymer systems and two particle systems. We find strong evidence for universality, both in the qualitative behavior of the fluctuations and in the remarkable agreement of the scaling functions describing them.