Finite-Size Effects in a Supercooled Liquid

TL;DR

This paper investigates how the size of a supercooled liquid system affects its static and dynamic properties, showing that small systems can still provide insights into bulk behavior, with larger small systems acting as nearly independent subsystems.

Contribution

It demonstrates that small-scale simulations (as few as 65 particles) can effectively capture bulk properties, and larger small systems behave as nearly independent subsystems.

Findings

Systems with 65 particles yield relevant bulk insights.

A 130-particle system behaves as two non-interacting 65-particle systems.

Finite-size effects are significant but manageable in supercooled liquids.

Abstract

We study the influence of the system size on various static and dynamic properties of a supercooled binary Lennard-Jones liquid via computer simulations. In this way, we demonstrate that the treatment of systems as small as N=65 particles yields relevant results for the understanding of bulk properties. Especially, we find that a system of N=130 particles behaves basically as two non-interacting systems of half the size.