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What Does the Potential Energy Landscape Tell Us about the Dynamics of Supercooled Liquids and Glasses?

2003; American Physical Society; Volume: 91; Issue: 23 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1103/physrevlett.91.235501

1092-0145

B. Doliwa, Andreas Heuer,

Phase Equilibria and Thermodynamics

For a model glass former we demonstrate via computer simulations how macroscopic dynamic quantities can be inferred from a potential energy landscape (PEL) analysis. The essential step is to consider whole superstructures of many PEL minima, called metabasins, rather than single minima. We show that two types of metabasins exist: some allowing for quasifree motion on the PEL (liquidlike), and the others acting as traps (solidlike). The activated, multistep escapes from the latter metabasins are found to dictate the slowing down of dynamics upon cooling over a much broader temperature range than is currently assumed.