Inherent structures dynamics in glasses: a comparative study

D.A.STARIOLO; J.J.ARENZON; G.FABRICIUS

PHYSICA A - STATISTICAL AND THEORETICAL PHYSICS

Elsevier

Año: 2004 vol. 340 p. 316 - 326

0378-4371

A comparative study of the dynamics of inherent structures at low temperatures is performed on di,erent models of glass formers: a three-dimensional Lennard–Jones binary mixture (LJBM), facilitated spin models (either symmetrically constrained, SCIC, or asymmetrically, ACIC) and the trap model. We use suitable correlation functions introduced in a previous work which allow to distinguish the behavior between models with or without spatial or topological structure. Furthermore, the correlations between inherent structures behave di,erently in the cases of strong (SCIC) andfragile (ACIC, LJ) glasses as a consequence of the di,erent role playedby energy barriers when the temperature is lowered. The similarities in the behavior of the ACIC and LJBM suggest a common nature of the glassy dynamics for both systems.