Relationship between vibrations and dynamical heterogeneity in a model glass former: Extended soft modes but local relaxation

Abstract

We study the relation between short-time vibrational modes and long-time relaxational dynamics in a kinetically constrained lattice gas with harmonic interactions between neighbouring particles. We find a correlation between the location of the low- (high-) frequency vibrational modes and regions of high (low) propensity for motion. This is similar to what was observed in continuous force systems, but our interpretation is different: in our case relaxation is due to localised excitations which propagate through the system; these localised excitations act as background disorder for the elastic network, giving rise to anomalous vibrational modes. Our results provide an example whereby a correlation between spatially extended low-frequency modes and high-propensity regions does not imply that relaxational dynamics originates in extended soft modes but rather belies their common origin. We consider other measures of elastic heterogeneity, such as non-affine displacement fields and mode localisation lengths, and discuss implications of our results to interpretations of dynamic heterogeneity more generally.