Glassy dynamics in gelling systems: From chemical gels to colloidal glasses

The study of our minimal statistical mechanics model for gelling systems, by means of numerical simulations, suggests a unifying picture for gelation phenomena, connecting classical gelation and recent results on colloidal systems. By varying the model parameters the slow dynamics present a crossover from the classical polymer gelation to dynamics more typical of colloidal systems, with a glassy regime that is interpreted in terms of effective clusters. © 2004 American Institute of Physics