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 interacting molecules, each molecule being built of m atoms, and having a gyration radius (related to the cage size) which vanishes at zero temperature. We use a small cage expansion, valid at low temperatures, which allows to compute the cage size, the specific heat (which follows the Dulong and Petit law), and the configurational entropy. (C) 1999 American Institute of Physics. [S0021-9606(99)50326-7].