A crossover in spatio-temporal correlations of strain fluctuations in glass forming liquids

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.