| Abstract |
The central question that we address in this thesis is the thermodynamics of colloidal glasses. The thermodynamics of colloidal hard sphere glasses are directly related to the entropy of the system, since the phase behavior of hard sphere systems is dictated only by entropic contributions, and also to the vibrational dynamics of the system which represents a form of the entropy too. In this thesis, we provide a direct measurement of the entropy and the vibrational modes of colloidal hard sphere glasses and compare them to those of the crystals which have been studied much more extensively.
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