Coupling of caged molecule dynamics to Johari-Goldstein β-relaxation in metallic glasses

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Three recently published papers have discovered a general property of the fast caged dynamics observed in the glassy states of polyalcohols (S. Capaccioli et al., J. Phys. Chem. B 119, 8800 (2015)), amorphous polymers (K. L. Ngai et al., J. Phys. Chem. B 119, 12502 (2015)), and van der Waals molecular glass-formers (K. L. Ngai et al., J. Phys. Chem. B 119, 12519 (2015)). The fast caged dynamics are manifested as nearly constant loss (NCL) in dielectric and mechanical susceptibility. Shown before in these papers is the intensity of the caged dynamics change temperature dependence at a temperature THF nearly coincident with the secondary glass transition temperature Tgβ, at which the Johari-Goldstein (JG) β-relaxation time τJG reaches ∼103 s. Evidently this finding indicates the coupling of the caged dynamics to the secondary glass transition. The glass-formers considered so far are all soft matters. However, the generality of the phenomenon and its explanation implies that the relation, THF ≈ Tgβ, should be observed in other classes of glass-formers. In this paper, we extend the consideration of the phenomenon and explanation to metallic glasses, which are not soft matter. The experimental data presented show the same phenomenon, supporting its generality and fundamental importance in the physics of glass and glass transition.