Specific Heat Anomaly in a Supercooled Liquid with Amorphous Boundary Conditions

Abstract

We study the specific heat of a model supercooled liquid confined in a spherical cavity with amorphous boundary conditions. We find the equilibrium specic heat has a cavity-size-dependent peak as a function of temperature. The cavity allows us to perform a finite-size scaling (FSS) analysis, which indicates the peak persists at a finite temperature in the thermodynamic limit. We attempt to collapse the data onto a FSS curve according to different theoretical scenarii, obtaining reasonable results in two cases: a not-so-simple" liquid with nonstandard values of the exponents, and random first-order theory (RFOT), with two different length scales.