Formation of double glass in binary mixtures of anisotropic particles: Dynamic heterogeneities in rotations and displacements

TL;DR

This study investigates the formation of a double glass state in a binary mixture of anisotropic and circular particles, revealing heterogeneities in rotations and displacements driven by impurity clustering and cooperative dynamics.

Contribution

It introduces a model demonstrating double glass formation with coupled orientational and positional disorder, highlighting heterogeneity in particle flip motions and cooperative reorientations.

Findings

Double glass state with mesoscopic order in both position and orientation.

Heterogeneous flip motions depend on impurity clustering.

Long-time heterogeneity links non-flip rotations to displacement dynamics.

Abstract

We study glass behavior in a mixture of elliptic and circular particles in two dimensions at low temperatures using an orientation-dependent Lennard-Jones potential. The ellipses have a mild aspect ratio ($\sim 1.2$) and tend to align at low temperatures, while the circular particles play the role of impurities disturbing the ellipse orientations at a concentration of 20%. These impurities have a size smaller than that of the ellipses and attract them in the homeotropic alignment. As a result, the coordination number around each impurity is mostly five or four in glassy states. We realize double glass, where both the orientations and the positions are disordered but still hold mesoscopic order. We find a strong heterogeneity in the flip motions of the ellipses, which sensitively depends on the impurity clustering. The average rotational diffusion constant is determined by rapidly flipping ellipses, which still remain even at low temperatures in our model. In contrast, the non-flip rotations (with angle changes not close to $\pm \pi$) are mainly caused by the cooperative configuration changes involving many particles. Then, there arises a long-time heterogeneity in the non-flip rotations closely correlated with the dynamic heterogeneity in displacements.