Glass transition of quantum hard spheres in high dimensions

Abstract

We study the equilibrium thermodynamics of quantum hard spheres in the infinite-dimensional limit, determining the boundary between liquid and glass phases in the temperature-density plane by means of the Franz-Parisi potential. We find that as the temperature decreases from high values, the effective radius of the spheres is enhanced by a multiple of the thermal de Broglie wavelength, thus increasing the effective filling fraction and decreasing the critical density for the glass phase. Numerical calculations show that the critical density continues to decrease monotonically as the temperature decreases further, suggesting that the system will form a glass at sufficiently low temperatures for any density. The methods used in this paper can be extended to more general potentials, and also to other transitions such as the Kauzman/Replica Symmetry Breaking (RSB) transition, the Gardner transition, and potentially even jamming.