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One of the greatest challenges in contemporary condensed matter physics is toascertain whether the formation of glasses from liquids is fundamentallythermodynamic or dynamic in origin. While the thermodynamic paradigm hasdominated theoretical research for decades, the purely kinetic perspective ofthe dynamical facilitation (DF) theory has attained prominence in recent times.In particular, recent experiments and simulations have highlighted theimportance of facilitation using simple model systems composed of sphericalparticles. However, an overwhelming majority of liquids possess anisotropy inparticle shape and interactions and it is therefore imperative to examinefacilitation in complex glass-formers. Here, we apply the DF theory to systemswith orientational degrees of freedom as well as anisotropic attractiveinteractions. By analyzing data from experiments on colloidal ellipsoids, weshow that facilitation plays a pivotal role in translational as well asorientational relaxation. Further, we demonstrate that the introduction ofattractive interactions leads to spatial decoupling of translational androtational facilitation, which subsequently results in the decoupling ofdynamical heterogeneities. Most strikingly, the DF theory can predict theexistence of reentrant glass transitions based on the statistics of localizeddynamical events, called excitations, whose duration is substantially smallerthan the structural relaxation time. Our findings pave the way forsystematically testing the DF approach in complex glass-formers and alsoestablish the significance of facilitation in governing structural relaxationin supercooled liquids.

Dynamical facilitation governs glassy dynamics in suspensions of colloidal ellipsoids