From a fundamental viewpoint, glasses are out of equilibrium systems, so that concepts and techniques from statistical mechanics cannot be applied in a straightforward fashion given the presence of broken ergodicity, which results from an incomplete sampling of the phase space on reasonable time scales. The breakdown of the relationship between spontaneous fluctuations and dissipation leads to time dependent thermodynamic quantities that induce ageing phenomena typical of glasses, i.e., their properties can vary quite substantially with the thermal history of the melt and the waiting time before the experiment/measurement is performed. Given these intrinsic features of the glassy state, atomistic...
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