A microscopically-based, global landscape perspective on slow dynamics in condensed matter

TL;DR

This paper links the onset of slow dynamics in supercooled liquids to the geometric properties of their potential energy landscape, using a landscape-based mechanism that predicts diffusion behavior.

Contribution

It introduces a geometric, landscape-based framework for understanding slow dynamics, validated by predicting diffusion constants in supercooled liquids.

Findings

Geodesic path lengthening correlates with slow dynamics onset.

The landscape-based model accurately predicts diffusion constants.

A switch in ensembles facilitates the geometric analysis.

Abstract

A complete understanding of the precipitous onset of slow dynamics in systems such as supercooled liquids requires making direct connections between dynamics and the underlying potential energy landscape. With the aid of a switch in ensembles, we show that it is possible to formulate a landscape-based mechanism for the onset of slow dynamics based on the rapid lengthening of the geodesic paths that traverse the landscape. We confirm the usefulness of this purely geometric analysis by showing that it successfully predicts the diffusion constants of a standard model supercooled liquid.