Dynamic percolation and Slow Relaxation in Glass-like Materials

Abstract

Glass-like materials are nonequilibrium systems where the relaxation time may exceed reasonable time scales of observations. In the present paper a dynamic percolation model is introduced in order to explain the principal properties of glass-like materials near the dynamic transition. Here, contrary to conventional percolation problems, clusters are groups of particles dynamically correlated. Introducing a size dependent relaxation time and the scaling hypothesis for the distribution of dynamically correlated clusters the two step relaxation predicted by the mode coupling theory and observed in experiments is obtained.