Published March 1998 | Version v1
Journal article

Stringlike Cooperative Motion in a Supercooled Liquid

  • 1. Center for Theoretical and Computational Materials Science, NIST, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899 (United States)
  • 2. Polymers Division, NIST, Gaithersburg, Maryland 20899 (United States)
  • 3. Institut fuer Physik, Johannes Gutenberg Universitaet, Staudinger Weg 7, D-55099 Mainz (Germany)
  • 4. Parallel Computational Sciences Department, Sandia National Laboratory, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87185-1111 (United States)
  • 5. Department of Applied Mathematics, University of Western Ontario, London, Ontario N6A 5B7 (Canada)

Description

Extensive molecular dynamics simulations are performed on a glass-forming Lennard-Jones mixture to determine the nature of the cooperative motions occurring in this model fragile liquid. We observe stringlike cooperative molecular motion (open-quotes stringsclose quotes) at temperatures well above the glass transition. The mean length of the strings increases upon cooling, and the string length distribution is found to be nearly exponential. copyright 1998 The American Physical Society

Additional details

Publishing Information

Journal Title
Physical Review Letters
Journal Volume
80
Journal Issue
11
Journal Page Range
p. 2338-2341.
ISSN
0031-9007
CODEN
PRLTAO