T. Maimbourg – 14 novembre

Glasses are amorphous solids which show intriguing experimental features. A prominent example is the wealth of phenomena that appear in the out-of-equilibrium dynamics (through e.g. a quench or an external drive) at low temperatures. Another occurs at even lower temperatures, where quantum effects start to play a role: thermodynamic quantities display an anomalous behaviour with respect to what one expects from standard (ordered) solids. I will first give a short overview of the mean-field theory of structural glasses, able to unify many physical situations (dense liquids, soft and hard colloids, granular materials, emulsions) and transitions in the same conceptual framework. Then I will review recent results deriving from these ideas to the above-mentioned examples.