A first-principle computation of the thermodynamics of glasses

We propose a first-principle 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 intera cting molecules, each molecule being built of m atoms, and having a gyratio n radius (related to the cage size) which vanishes at zero temperature. We use a small cage expansion, valid at low temperatures, which allows to comp ute the cage size, the specific heat (which follows the Dulong and Petit la w), and the configurational entropy. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics . [S0021-9606(99)50326-7].