Ehrenfest Relations at the Glass Transition: Solution to an Old Paradox

In order to find out whether there exists a thermodynamic description of the glass phase, the Ehrenfest relations along the glass transition line are reconsidered. It is explained that the one involving the compressibility is always satisfied, and that the one involving the specific heat is principally incorrect. Thermodynamical relations are presented for nonergodic systems with a one-level tree in phase space. They are derived for a spin glass model, checked for other models, and expected to apply, e.g., to glass-forming liquids. The second Ehrenfest relation gets a contribution from the configurational entropy.