Anomalous relaxation and dielectric response

It is shown that all the known experimental (quasi)stationary dielectric response functions of glassy media can be derived from a standard generalized Langevin description of overdamped torsional dipole oscillators in trapping potentials with random orientations under some minimal assumptions. The non-Markovian theory obeys the fluctuation-dissipation theorem and the Onsager regression theorem. Moreover, it displays no aging on the time scale of the dielectric response, all in assumption of local thermal (quasi)equilibrium. Aging might come from jumping among metastable traps. It occurs on a quite different time scale which is not related to the principal dielectric response. We put the old phenomenological theory of Cole and Cole, Davidson and Cole, and others on a firm basis within a stochastic, thermodynamically consistent approach.