Relevance of the Inherent Structures and Related Fundamental Assumptions in the Energy Landscape

TL;DR

This paper critically examines the foundational assumptions of the Stillinger-Weber analysis of inherent structures in energy landscapes, concluding that basin free energies are more useful than IS's for understanding glasses.

Contribution

It challenges the validity of the fundamental assumptions in the Stillinger-Weber analysis and emphasizes the importance of basin free energies over inherent structures.

Findings

Fundamental assumptions in Stillinger-Weber analysis cannot be validated.

Inherent structures are less useful than basin free energies for understanding glasses.

Conflicting results in previous studies are explained by these assumptions.

Abstract

We carefully investigate the two fundamental assumptions in the Stillinger-Weber analysis of the inherent structures (IS's) in the energy landscape and come to conclude that they cannot be validated. This explains some of the conflicting results between their conclusions and some recent rigorous and exact results. Our analysis shows that basin free energies, and not IS's, are useful for understanding glasses.