New ideas in glass transitions

Abstract

In this talk I will review some of the recent applications of the replica theory to glasses. I will firstly describe the basic assumptions and I will show that they can be considered as a precise reformulations of old ideas. The relation of this approach with the mode-coupling theory will be shortly discussed. I will present numerical simulations for binary mixtures. The results of these simulations point toward the correctness of the replica approach to glasses. I will describe the results of off-equilibrium simulations for large systems, in which the aging dynamics is studied.