Displacement correlation as an indicator of collective motion in one-dimensional and quasi-one-dimensional systems of repulsive Brownian particles

Abstract

While the slow dynamics in glassy liquids are known to be accompanied by collective motions undetectable with static structure factor and requiring four-point space-time correlations for their detection, it is usually difficult to calculate such correlations analytically. In the present study, a system of Brownian particles in a (quasi-)one-dimensional passageway is taken as an example to demonstrate the usefulness of displacement correlation. In the purely one-dimensional case (known as the single-file diffusion) with overtaking forbidden, the diffusion slows down and collective motion is captured by displacement correlation both calculated here numerically and analytically. On the other hand, displacement correlation vanishes if overtaking is allowed, which leads to normal diffusion.