How can an amorphous material be rigid? Glass – the prototypical and ubiquitous amorphous solid – inhabits an incredibly ramified and complex energy landscape, which presumably underlies its rigidity. But how? Dealing with so many relevant energy minima and the ensuing far-from-equilibrium dynamics has emerged as one of the central problems in statistical physics. Tackling it requires new tools and concepts. The Simons Collaboration on Cracking the Glass Problem, addressing such fundamental issues as disorder, nonlinear response and far-from-equilibrium dynamics, builds upon three powerful approaches: the study of marginal stability at jamming, the mean-field theory of glasses in infinite dimension, and the dynamics of systems in complex landscapes. The convergence of recent breakthroughs in these areas generates a unique opportunity to come to grips with these three outstanding and intimately related challenges. This collection of datasets is associated with publications from the Charbonneau group and their collaborators as part of the Simons collaboration.
