Metastable states as a key to the dynamics of supercooled liquids

TL;DR

This paper uses computer simulations to show that in supercooled liquids, deep valleys in the energy landscape corresponding to metastable states significantly influence dynamics, relaxation, and heterogeneity.

Contribution

It explicitly links metastable states and landscape topography to the complex dynamics observed in supercooled liquids, providing new insights into their behavior.

Findings

Deep valleys correspond to long-lived metastable states.

Metastable states influence non-exponential relaxation.

Dynamic heterogeneities are related to landscape features.

Abstract

Computer simulations of a model glass-forming system are presented, which are particularly sensitive to the correlation between the dynamics and the topography of the potential energy landscape. This analysis clearly reveals that in the supercooled regime the dynamics is strongly influenced by the presence of deep valleys in the energy landscape, corresponding to long-lived metastable amorphous states. We explicitly relate non-exponential relaxation effects and dynamic heterogeneities to these metastable states and thus to the specific topography of the energy landscape.