Controlling the Glass Transition through Active Fluctuating Interactions

Abstract

Fluctuating pairwise interactions are understood to drive fluid-like states in dense biological systems. These states find a broad range of functionalities, such as directing growth during morphogenesis and forming aggregates with heightened mechanical response. However, a tractable model capturing the role of microscopic fluctuating interactions in these structural transitions is crucially lacking. Here, we study a $p$-spin model with fluctuating pairwise couplings (of strength $D_a$ and persistence time $t_a$) as a schematic model for interaction-mediated fluidization. We find that while stronger fluctuations suppress the glass transition, more persistent fluctuations have the opposite effect. We identify the presence of an emergent fluctuation-dissipation relation at long times. We numerically extract the critical temperature $T_c(D_a, t_a)$ from a scaling relation near the transition, illustrating how microscopic fluctuations control the glass transition.