Glass Phenomenology from the Connection to Spin Glasses

Using an effective potential replica formalism the properties of supercooled liquids near their glass transition are related to those of an Ising spin glass in a magnetic field. Results from the droplet picture of spin glasses are used to provide an explanation of the main features of fragile glasses such as Vogel-Fulcher-like behavior of the dynamics and the growing size as the temperature is reduced of the dynamically re-arranging regions. Exact solutions of one-dimensional fluids with glass-like features have been obtained and will be used to provide illustrations of the connection between glasses and spin glasses.