Quasielastic scattering: slow dynamics of glasses

The dynamics of glasses shows some distinct differences with respect to the crystalline state. Both in the short time regime (boson peak) and the microscopically slow regime (alpha- and beta-relaxation) there are glass-typical features. The outstanding sharpness of nuclear transitions offers a new tool to investigate the properties of glasses at long times, i.e., some nanoseconds to microseconds. The article will give a short introduction to glass-dynamic and convenient parameters for the theoretical description and will summarize recent results on model systems.