Emergent facilitation and glassy dynamics in supercooled liquids.

ABSTRACT: In supercooled liquids, dynamical facilitation refers to a phenomenon where microscopic motion begets further motion nearby, resulting in spatially heterogeneous dynamics. This is central to the glassy relaxation dynamics of such liquids, which show super-Arrhenius growth of relaxation timescales with decreasing temperature. Despite the importance of dynamical facilitation, there is no theoretical understanding of how facilitation emerges and impacts relaxation dynamics. Here, we present a theory that explains the microscopic origins of dynamical facilitation. We show that dynamics proceeds by localized bond-exchange events, also known as excitations, resulting in the accumulation of elastic stresses with which new excitations can interact. At low temperatures, these elastic interactions d

SUBMITTER: Hasyim MR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11161792 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature