Signatures of Dynamical Heterogeneity in the Structure of Glassy Free-energy Minima

Abstract

From numerical minimization of a model free energy functional for a system of hard spheres, we show that the width of the local peaks of the time-averaged density field at a glassy free-energy minimum exhibits large spatial variation, similar to that of the ``local Debye-Waller factor'' in simulations of dynamical heterogeneity. Molecular dynamics simulations starting from a particle configuration generated from the density distribution at a glassy free-energy minimum show similar spatial heterogeneity in the degree of localization, implying a direct connection between dynamical heterogeneity and the structure of glassy free energy minima.

5 pages, 5 figures

References in corpus (1)

• Glass Transition of Hard Sphere Systems: Molecular Dynamics and Density Functional Theory

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Theoretical perspective on the glass transition and amorphous materials
• Non-hyperuniform metastable states around a disordered hyperuniform state of densely packed spheres: stochastic density functional theory at strong coupling
• The potential energy landscape and inherent dynamics of a hard-sphere fluid
• Replica Field Theory for a Generalized Franz--Parisi Potential of Inhomogeneous Glassy Systems: New Closure and the Associated Self-Consistent Equation