Cooling-rate effects in a model of glasses

Using Monte Carlo simulations we study cooling-rate effects in a three-dime nsional Ising model with four-spin interactions. During coarsening, this mo del develops growing energy barriers, which at low temperature lead to very slow dynamics. We show that the characteristic zero-temperature length inc reases very slowly with the inverse cooling rate, similarly to the behavior of ordinary glasses. For computationally accessible cooling rates the mode l undergoes an ideal glassy transition, i.e., the glassy transition for a v ery small cooling rate coincides with a thermodynamic singularity. We also study the cooling of this model with a certain fraction of spins fixed. Due to such heterogeneous crystallization seeds, the final state strongly depe nds on the cooling rate. Only for a sufficiently fast cooling rate does the system end up in a glassy state, while slow cooling inevitably leads to a crystal phase.