The Structure of Energy Landscape and the Non-Arrhenius behaviour of supercooled Liquids

Abstract

A theoretical explanation of the non‐Arrhenius behavior that can be observed in supercooled liquids at sufficiently low temperatures is given. The starting point of the investigations is the determination of the density of minimum points of the energy landscape. The knowledge of this density allows the determination of characteristic length scales in the multidimensional configurational space and their corresponding scales in the real space. From this point of view it is possible to study the dynamics of the glass transition. Four regimes are obtained from this analysis. While the non‐activated regime is mainly described in terms of the mode‐coupling theory and the frozen low temperature regime is related to the spectrum of vibrations and possible local rearrangements, the weak and the strong activated regime becomes important close to the glass transition temperature.The weak activated regime requires considers a diffusion like motion of the system in the configurational space. Characteristic properties ...