Magnetic Glass formed by kinetic arrest of first order phase transitions

Abstract

Metallic glasses are formed by splat-cooling; this ensures that atomic motions are arrested before the latent heat of solidification can be extracted. Glass is defined as a higher disorder metastable state with arrested kinetics. Arrested kinetics is a defining property of a glass, rather than structural disorder as, e.g., in amorphous silicon [1]. `Magnetic glasses' identified recently possess structural as well as magnetic long-range order, but show relaxation and specific heat as for a structural glass [1]. The values of Tc and Tg in these materials are easily varied by varying the magnetic field H, allowing one to go from metallic glass to glass former like scenario.