The Viscous Slowing down of Supercooled Liquids and the Glass Transition: Phenomenology, Concepts, and Models

The viscous slowing down of supercooled liquids that leads to glass formation can be considered as a classical, and is assuredly a thoroughly studied, example of a ”jamming process”. In this review, we stress the distinctive features characterizing the phenomenon. We also discuss the main theoretical approaches, with an emphasis on the concepts (free volume, dynamic freezing and mode-coupling approximations, configurational entropy and energy landscape, frustration) that could be useful in other areas of physics where jamming processes are encountered. To appear in: Jamming and Rheology: Constrained Dynamics on Microscopic and Macroscopic Scales S. Edwards, A. liu, and S. Nagel Eds.