Thermodynamics and the glass transition in model energy landscapes

The liquid-state thermodynamics for a model energy landscape corresponding to soft spheres with a mean-field attraction was determined. Key measures of a landscape were related to its bulk thermophysical properties through an exact expression for thermodynamics and approximate Adam-Gibbs relationship for kinetic behavior. Two approximations were considered in which the distribution of potential energy minima was either Gaussian or binomial. The resulting models provided a unified description of the liquid state across the complete range from low-temperature glassiness to high-temperature instability with respect to the vapor phase.