The glass transition in colloidal hard spheres

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Abstract
Dynamic light-scattering measurements on suspensions of hard colloidal spheres, in their metastable amorphous state prior to crystallization, identify the kinetic glass transition by the arrest of particle-concentration fluctuations on the experimental time-scale. This kinetic glass transition coincides with a spectacular change in the mechanism of crystallization. The measured intermediate scattering functions are quantitatively interpreted by mode-coupling theory. We find that both alpha and beta processes are necessary to describe the slow structural relaxation in the fluid near the glass transition.