Thermodynamics and dynamics of the inherent states at the glass transition

Abstract

It has been recently shown that one can understand the Prigogine-Defay ratio at the glass transition in terms of freezing into one of the many inherent states of the undercooled liquid. In the present paper, the treatment is extended to the dynamics at the glass transition to show the connection to isomorphism and density scaling. In addition, the energy limits for stable inherent states are discussed.