No Arabic abstract
Via molecular dynamics simulations of a generic glass former in the supercooled and normal liquid states, it is shown that spatial correlations of strain fluctuations exhibit a crossover from the well-established power-law $sim 1/r^3$-decay at long wavelengths to an exponential behavior, $sim exp(-r/l_{text {c}})$ at intermediate distances. The characteristic length of the exponential decay grows both with temperature and time via, $l_{text {c}}^2 propto D(T), t$, with $D(T)$ being the temperature-dependent diffusion coefficient. This suggests that the crossover between the power-law and exponential decays is governed by a diffusion process.
The phase behavior of liquids confined in a slit geometry does not reveal a crossover from a three to a two-dimensional behavior as the gap size decreases. Indeed, the prototypical two-dimensional hexatic phase only occurs in liquids confined to a monolayer. Here, we demonstrate that the dimensionality crossover is apparent in the lateral size dependence of the relaxation dynamics of confined liquids, developing a Debye model for the density of vibrational states of confined systems and performing extensive numerical simulations. In confined systems, Mermin-Wagner fluctuations enhance the amplitude of vibrational motion or Debye-Waller factor by a quantity scaling as the inverse gap width and proportional to the logarithm of the aspect ratio, as a clear signature of a two-dimensional behaviour. As the temperature or lateral system size increases, the crossover to a size-independent relaxation dynamics occurs when structural relaxation takes place before the vibrational modes with the longest wavelength develop.
It was recently shown that the real part of the frequency-dependent fluidity for several glass-forming liquids of different chemistry conforms to the prediction of the random barrier model (RBM) devised for ac electrical conduction in disordered solids [S. P. Bierwirth textit{et al.}, Phys. Rev. Lett. {bf 119}, 248001 (2017)]. Inspired by these results we introduce a crystallization-resistant modification of the Kob-Andersen binary Lennard-Jones mixture for which the results of extensive graphics-processing unit (GPU)-based molecular-dynamics simulations are presented. We find that the low-temperature mean-square displacement is fitted well by the RBM prediction, which involves no shape parameters. This finding highlights the challenge of explaining why a simple model based on hopping of non-interacting particles in a fixed random energy landscape can reproduce the complex and highly cooperative dynamics of glass-forming liquids.
We study a strongly interacting dense hard-sphere system confined between two parallel plates by event-driven molecular dynamics simulations to address the fundamental question of the nature of the 3D to 2D crossover. As the fluid becomes more and more confined the dynamics of the transverse and lateral degrees of freedom decouple, which is accompanied by a diverging time scale separating 2D from 3D behavior. Relying on the time-correlation function of the transversal kinetic energy the scaling behavior and its density-dependence is explored. Surprisingly, our simulations reveal that its time-dependence becomes purely exponential such that memory effects can be ignored. We rationalize our findings quantitatively in terms of an analytic theory which becomes exact in the limit of strong confinement.
The structural correlation functions of a weakly disordered Abrikosov lattice are calculated in a functional RG-expansion in $d=4-epsilon$ dimensions. It is shown, that in the asymptotic limit the Abrikosov lattice exhibits still quasi-long-range translational order described by a {it nonuniversal} exponent $eta_{bf G}$ which depends on the ratio of the renormalized elastic constants $kappa ={c}_{66}/ {c}_{11}$ of the flux line (FL) lattice. Our calculations clearly demonstrate three distinct scaling regimes corresponding to the Larkin, the random manifold and the asymptotic Bragg-glass regime. On a wide range of {it intermediate} length scales the FL displacement correlation function increases as a power law with twice the manifold roughness exponent $zeta_{rm RM}(kappa) $, which is also {it nonuniversal}. Correlation functions in the asymptotic regime are calculated in their full anisotropic dependencies and various order parameters are examined. Our results, in particular the $kappa$-dependency of the exponents, are in variance with those of the variational treatment with replica symmetry breaking which allows in principle an experimental discrimination between the two approaches.
We consider data losses in a single node of a packet-switched Internet-like network. We employ two distinct models, one with discrete and the other with continuous one-dimensional random walks, representing the state of a queue in a router. Both models {have} a built-in critical behavior with {a sharp} transition from exponentially small to finite losses. It turns out that the finite capacity of a buffer and the packet-dropping procedure give rise to specific boundary conditions which lead to strong loss rate fluctuations at the critical point even in the absence of such fluctuations in the data arrival process.