# Effects of random pinning on the potential energy landscape of a supercooled liquid

## TL;DR

This study explores how random pinning influences the energy landscape of supercooled liquids, revealing a transition from glassy to structure-seeking behavior and implications for theoretical models.

## Contribution

It introduces a novel analysis linking particle packings to energy landscape features under random pinning, highlighting a crossover in landscape structure.

## Key findings

- Transition from glassy to structure-seeking landscape with increased pinning
- Structural similarity of minima correlates with landscape funnels
- Dependence of landscape features on pinned particle fraction

## Abstract

We use energy landscape methods to investigate the response of a supercooled liquid to random pinning. We classify the structural similarity of different energy minima using a measure of overlap. This analysis reveals a correspondence between distinct particle packings (which are characterised via the overlap) and funnels on the energy landscape (which are characterised via disconnectivity graphs). As the number of pinned particles is increased, we find a crossover from glassy behavior at low pinning to a structure-seeking landscape at high pinning, in which all thermally accessible minima are structurally similar. We discuss the consequences of these results for theories of randomly pinned liquids. We also investigate how the energy landscape depends on the fraction of pinned particles, including the degree of frustration and the evolution of distinct packings as the number of pinned particles is reduced.