Relation between heterogeneous frozen regions in supercooled liquids and non-Debye spectrum in the corresponding glasses


Abstract in English

Recent numerical studies on glassy systems provide evidences for a population of non-Goldstone modes (NGMs) in the low-frequency spectrum of the vibrational density of states $D(omega)$. Similarly to Goldstone modes (GMs), i. e., phonons in solids, NGMs are soft low-energy excitations. However, differently from GMs, NGMs are localized excitations. Here we first show that the parental temperature $T^*$ modifies the GM/NGM ratio in $D(omega)$. In particular, the phonon attenuation is reflected in a parental temperature dependency of the exponent $s(T^*)$ in the low-frequency power law $D(omega) sim omega^{s(T^*)}$, with $2 leq s(T^*) leq 4 $. Secondly, by comparing $s(T^*)$ with $s(p)$, i. e., the same quantity obtained by pinning mttp{a} $p$ particle fraction, we suggest that $s(T^*)$ reflects the presence of dynamical heterogeneous regions of size $xi^3 propto p$. Finally, we provide an estimate of $xi$ as a function of $T^*$, finding a mild power law divergence, $xi sim (T^* - T_d)^{-alpha/3}$, with $T_d$ the dynamical crossover temperature and $alpha$ falling in the range $alpha in [0.8,1.0]$.

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