Dynamical arrest and replica symmetry breaking in attractive colloids

Within the replica symmetry breaking framework developed by Mezard and 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 and recent molecular dynamics simulations. Quantitative differences are 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.