SCATTERING EXPERIMENTS FOR THE MICROSCOPIC UNDERSTANDING OF THE GLASS-TRANSITION

Scattering experiments studying the dynamics of glass-forming systems have become of special importance for understanding glass transition phenomena. They monitor the density autocorrelation function which has become a key observable since it is calculated within a new concept of the glass transition, the mode coupling theory (MCT). After a short reference to the main predictions and examples of-scattering experiments where these phenomena have been observed, results for two model systems will be analyzed with MCT: a recently reported analysis of neutron scattering data for orthoterphenyl in the beta-regime is improved and photon correlation spectroscopy data on colloidal spheres are described by simultaneously analyzing the beta- and alpha-relaxation dynamics using the MCT scaling laws.