Glasses and local packings

A cell theory for glassforming liquids, amorphous solids and granular packings, is developed by combining geometrical properties of local packings with the ideas of inherent structures and free volume theory. We show that for hard-spheres the present theory reproduces well the equation of state, the approach to zero of the configurational entropy and the divergence of large relaxation times following both the Vogel–Tammann–Fulcher behavior and the Adam–Gibbs relation.