Dynamical arrest and replica symmetry breaking in attractive colloids

Within the Replica Symmetry Breaking (RSB) framework developed by M.Mezard and G.Parisi we investigate the occurrence of structural glass transitions in a model of fluid characterized by hard sphere repulsion together with short range attraction. This model is appropriate for the description of a class of colloidal suspensions. The transition line in the density-temperature plane displays a reentrant behavior, in agreement with Mode Coupling Theory (MCT), a dynamical approach based on the Mori-Zwanzig formalism. Quantitative differences are however found, together with the absence of the predicted glass-glass transition at high density. We also perform a systematic study of the pure hard sphere fluid in order to ascertain the accuracy of the adopted method and the convergence of the numerical procedure.