Relaxation Dynamics in the Energy Landscape of Glass-Forming Liquids

Abstract

We numerically study the zero-temperature relaxation dynamics of several glass-forming models to their inherent structures, following quenches from equilibrium configurations sampled across a wide range of initial temperatures. In a mean-field Mari-Kurchan model, we find that relaxation changes from a power law to an exponential decay below a well-defined temperature, consistent with recent findings in mean-field p-spin models. By contrast, for finite-dimensional systems, the relaxation is always algebraic, with a nontrivial universal exponent at high temperatures crossing over to a harmonic value at low temperatures. We demonstrate that this apparent evolution is controlled by a temperature-dependent population of localized glassy excitations. Our work unifies several recent lines of studies aiming at a detailed characterization of the complex potential energy landscape of glass formers, and challenges both mean-field and real space descriptions of glasses.Received 5 July 2021Revised 25 October 2021Accepted 2 February 2022DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevX.12.021001Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article’s title, journal citation, and DOI.Published by the American Physical SocietyPhysics Subject Headings (PhySH)Research AreasClassical statistical mechanicsPhysical SystemsDisordered systemsGlassesTechniquesMolecular dynamicsStatistical methodsStatistical Physics