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Relaxation and Diffusion in Complex Systems pp 1–47Cite as

Introduction to the Problems of Relaxation and Diffusion in Complex Systems

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Part of the book series: Partially Ordered Systems ((PARTIAL.ORDERED))

Abstract

Relaxation and diffusion are physical and chemical processes that occur by various ways in condensed matter of all kinds (inorganic, organic, polymeric, biomolecular, colloidal, and metallic), in different states (crystalline, glassy, liquid, molten, and ceramic) and of different sizes or dimensions (from bulk to nanometer). The processes are often involved in the formation of natural substances and in the fabrication of synthetic materials. For the latter, we can go back to ancient history of the Babylonians making glasses out of sand. The recipe of making glasses, which is recorded in history, involves rapid cooling of the liquid material at a high temperature to a lower temperature to form the glass.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    On a personal and historical note, the author was invited in 1982 by Prof. P.W. Anderson to give a talk at Princeton University on his paper published in Comment Solids State Phys. 9, 127 (1979), Roman Smoluchowski was the editor (now a defunct journal). A year later, he was invited again by Prof. Anderson to participate and give a talk in the workshop on glass transition organized at the Aspens Center for Physics, Aspens, Colorado. This activity was followed by another workshop on glass transition at the Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of California, Santa Barbara organized by Prof. Anderson and Prof. E. Abrahams, and I was one of the invited speakers. For the record, I must admit that my talk at Santa Barbara did not impress many people in the audience, particularly the theoreticians, and I would call it a failure. Dr. George Wright at the Office of Naval Research was aware of the upsurge of interest in the glass transition problem by the condensed matter physics community, and he funded me to organize a workshop entitled Relaxation in Complex Systems in the campus of Virginia Tech. at Blacksburg, VA, in July 1983. The proceedings with the same title was published in 1984 and widely distributed free of charge by the Naval Research Laboratory. Prof. T.V. Ramakrishnan was also interested in the problem. He organized a workshop in Bangalore, India, in 1985, and I was invited as the keynote speaker. This activity was followed by the publication of the monogram Non-Debye Relaxation in Condensed Matter, T.V. Ramakrishnan and M. Raj Lakshmi editors, World Scientific, Singapore (1987). In this book I contributed a 170-page review. Anyway, all the activities mentioned in the above indicate the tremendous interest of the research community at that period in the 1980s. Theoreticians interested were mostly those involved in spin glasses who logically viewed the glass transition as the next important problem to attack. The outlook changes dramatically in 1987, after the discovery of high T c superconductors by Bednorz and Müller in 1986. The excitement generated by the discovery of high T c superconductors occupied the attention of many scientists especially the theoreticians, including possibly Prof. Anderson himself. It is gratifying to see Prof. Anderson returned in 1995 to remind the community of the importance of the glass transition problem. On behalf of all workers in the field, I thank Prof. Anderson for his unwavering support given to the research area of glass transition.

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  1. CNR-IPCF Associate, Dipartimento di Fisica, Università di Pisa, Largo Bruno Pontecorvo 3, I-56127, Pisa, Italy

    K.L. Ngai

  2. Formerly at Naval Research Laboratory, Washington, DC, USA

    K.L. Ngai

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Ngai, K. (2011). Introduction to the Problems of Relaxation and Diffusion in Complex Systems. In: Relaxation and Diffusion in Complex Systems. Partially Ordered Systems. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-7649-9_1

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