Thermodynamics of glasses: A first principles computation

We propose a first principles computation of the equilibrium thermodynamics of simple fragile glasses starting from the two body interatomic potential . A replica formulation translates this problem into that of a gas of inter acting molecules, each molecule being built of m atoms, and having a gyrati on radius (related to the cage size) which vanishes at zero temperature. We use a small cage expansion, valid at low temperatures, which allows us to compute the cage size, the specific heat (which follows the Dulong and Peti t law), and the configurational entropy.