Macroscopic Facilitation of Glassy Relaxation Kinetics: Ultra Stable Glass Films with Front-Like Thermal Response

The recent experimental fabrication of ultra stable glass films via vapour deposition [Science 315, 353 (2007)] and the observation of front-like response to the annealing of these films [Phys.Rev.Lett. 102, 065503 (2009)], have raised important questions about the possibility of manipulating the properties of glass films and addressing fundamental questions about kinetics and thermodynamics of amorphous materials. Central to both of these issues is the need to establish the essential physics that governs the formation of the ultra-stable films and their subsequent response. In this paper we demonstrate that a generic model of glassy dynamics can account for the formation of ultra-stable films, the associated enhancement of relaxation rates by a factor of 10^5, the observation of front-like response to temperature jumps and the temperature dependence of the front velocity