Self-generated disorder and structural glass formation in homopolymer globules - art. no. 051112

We have investigated the interrelation between spin glasses and structural glasses. Spin glasses in this case are p-spin interaction spin glasses (at p>2) or Potts glasses that contain quenched disorder, whereas the structura l glasses are here exemplified by a homopolymeric globule, which can be vie wed as a liquid of connected units on a nanoscale. It is argued that the ho mopolymeric globule problem can be mapped onto a disorder field theoretical model whose effective Hamiltonian resembles the corresponding one for the spin glass model. In this sense the disorder in the globule is self-generat ed (in contrast to spin glasses) and can be related to competing interactio ns (virial coefficients of different signs) and the chain connectivity. The work is aimed at giving a quantitative description of this analogy. We hav e investigated in the mean-field approximation the phase diagram of the hom opolymeric globule where the transition line from the liquid to glassy glob ule is treated in terms of the replica symmetry breaking paradigm. The conf igurational entropy temperature dependence is also discussed.