A small subset of normal modes mimics the properties of dynamical heterogeneity in a model supercooled liquid

TL;DR

This paper reveals that a limited set of normal modes can replicate the dynamic heterogeneity observed in a supercooled liquid, linking energy landscape transitions to glassy behavior.

Contribution

It demonstrates that transitions in a supercooled liquid predominantly occur along few directions, which decrease with cooling, connecting jamming and glassy dynamics.

Findings

Transitions occur mainly along few energy landscape directions.

Number of transition directions decreases with lowering temperature.

Transition character shifts towards heterogeneity and localization.

Abstract

In this work, we study the nature of transitions between inherent structures of a two-dimensional model supercooled liquid. We demonstrate that these transitions occur predominately along a small number of directions on the energy landscape. Moreover, we show that the number of such directions decreases as the temperature of the liquid is decreased in the mildly supercooled regime, in concert with earlier studies on an athermal jamming system. We show that this decrease happens in parallel with a change in character of the transitions as dynamics in the system become more heterogeneous and localized. We investigate the origin of these trends, which suggests interesting connections between jamming and thermal glassy phenomena.