摘要

The glass transition involves more than one dynamic relaxation mechanisms in supercooled liquids, such as alpha relaxation, slow relaxation and fast relaxation and so on. For the traditional theoretical system, alpha relaxation is believed mainly responsible for the nature of the glass transition as the beginning of the phenomenon. This idea, however, has been open to a big challenge since recent studies have indicated that slow relaxation closely relates to alpha relaxation. Slow relaxation determines the characteristics of alpha relaxation and is the precursor and the more microscopic base of glass transition behavior. In order to illuminate the significance of slow relaxation in the fields of the glass transition and the structure of supercooled liquids, the accomplished progress is summarized from different aspects such as on the correlation between alpha relaxation and slow relaxation, on the manner of alpha-slow relaxation merging, on the energy landscape, on the excess wing and on the thermodynamically phenomenological models. The tendency of investigation in slow relaxation is also evaluated.