Spatial correlations of elementary relaxation events in glass-forming liquids

TL;DR

This study uses numerical simulations to analyze how localized relaxation events in glass-forming liquids facilitate subsequent events, revealing a crossover from noise-driven to facilitation-driven dynamics as temperature decreases.

Contribution

It provides detailed statistical analysis of relaxation avalanches in a model glass, highlighting the transition in relaxation mechanisms with cooling.

Findings

Relaxation occurs via irreversible particle jumps.

Each jump triggers an avalanche of relaxation events.

The nature of avalanches changes with cooling, indicating a crossover in relaxation dynamics.

Abstract

The dynamical facilitation scenario, by which localized relaxation events promote nearby relaxation events in an avalanching process, has been suggested as the key mechanism connecting the microscopic and the macroscopic dynamics of structural glasses. Here we investigate the statistical features of this process via the numerical simulation of a model structural glass. First we show that the relaxation dynamics of the system occurs through particle jumps that are irreversible, and that cannot be decomposed in smaller irreversible events. Then we show that each jump does actually trigger an avalanche. The characteristic of this avalanche change on cooling, suggesting that the relaxation dynamics crossovers from a noise dominated regime where jumps do not trigger other relaxation events, to a regime dominated by the facilitation process, where a jump trigger more relaxation events.