Slow dynamics and stress relaxation in a liquid as an elastic medium

TL;DR

This paper introduces a new framework viewing liquids as elastic media to explain the transition from exponential to slow stress relaxation dynamics, emphasizing the role of temperature-dependent local interactions.

Contribution

It presents a novel elastic medium approach to describe slow dynamics and stress relaxation in liquids, highlighting the impact of temperature on local relaxation interactions.

Findings

Liquids can be modeled as elastic media for stress relaxation.

Slow dynamics emerge due to temperature-dependent local interactions.

Transition from exponential to slow relaxation is explained by this framework.

Abstract

We propose a new framework to discuss the transition from exponential relaxation in a liquid to the regime of slow dynamics. For the purposes of stress relaxation, we show that a liquid can be treated as an elastic medium. We discuss that, on lowering the temperature, the feed-forward interaction mechanism between local relaxation events becomes operative, and results in slow relaxation.