5 research outputs found
Computer Simulations of Supercooled Liquids and Glasses
After a brief introduction to the dynamics of supercooled liquids, we discuss
some of the advantages and drawbacks of computer simulations of such systems.
Subsequently we present the results of computer simulations in which the
dynamics of a fragile glass former, a binary Lennard-Jones system, is compared
to the one of a strong glass former, SiO_2. This comparison gives evidence that
the reason for the different temperature dependence of these two types of glass
formers lies in the transport mechanism for the particles in the vicinity of
T_c, the critical temperature of mode-coupling theory. Whereas the one of the
fragile glass former is described very well by the ideal version of
mode-coupling theory, the one for the strong glass former is dominated by
activated processes. In the last part of the article we review some simulations
of glass formers in which the dynamics below the glass transition temperature
was investigated. We show that such simulations might help to establish a
connection between systems with self generated disorder (e.g. structural
glasses) and quenched disorder (e.g. spin glasses).Comment: 37 pages of Latex, 11 figures, to appear as a Topical Review article
in J. Phys.: Condens. Matte
Static and Dynamic Properties of a Viscous Silica Melt Molecular Dynamics Computer Simulations
We present the results of a large scale molecular dynamics computer
simulation in which we investigated the static and dynamic properties of a
silica melt in the temperature range in which the viscosity of the system
changes from O(10^-2) Poise to O(10^2) Poise. We show that even at temperatures
as high as 4000 K the structure of this system is very similar to the random
tetrahedral network found in silica at lower temperatures. The temperature
dependence of the concentration of the defects in this network shows an
Arrhenius law. From the partial structure factors we calculate the neutron
scattering function and find that it agrees very well with experimental neutron
scattering data. At low temperatures the temperature dependence of the
diffusion constants shows an Arrhenius law with activation energies which
are in very good agreement with the experimental values. With increasing
temperature we find that this dependence shows a cross-over to one which can be
described well by a power-law, D\propto (T-T_c)^gamma. The critical temperature
T_c is 3330 K and the exponent gamma is close to 2.1. Since we find a similar
cross-over in the viscosity we have evidence that the relaxation dynamics of
the system changes from a flow-like motion of the particles, as described by
the ideal version of mode-coupling theory, to a hopping like motion. We show
that such a change of the transport mechanism is also observed in the product
of the diffusion constant and the life time of a Si-O bond, or the space and
time dependence of the van Hove correlation functions.Comment: 30 pages of Latex, 14 figure