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Structural Relaxation of a Gel Modeled by Three Body Interactions
We report a molecular dynamics simulation study of a model gel whose
interaction potential is obtained by modifying the three body Stillinger-Weber
model potential for silicon. The modification reduces the average coordination
number, and suppresses the liquid-gas phase coexistence curve. The low density,
low temperature equilibrium gel that can thus form exhibits interesting
dynamical behavior, including compressed exponential relaxation of density
correlations. We show that motion responsible for such relaxation has ballistic
character, and arises from the motion of chain segments in the gel without the
restructuring of the gel network.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure
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