Acoustic wave propagation through a supercooled liquid: A normal mode analysis

Abstract

The mechanism of acoustic wave propagation in supercooled liquids is not yet fully understood since the vibrational dynamics of supercooled liquids are strongly affected by their amorphous inherent structures. In this paper, the acoustic wave propagation in a supercooled model liquid is studied by using normal mode analysis. Due to the highly disordered inherent structure, a single acoustic wave is decomposed into many normal modes in broad frequency range. This causes the rapid decay of the acoustic wave and results in anomalous wavenumber dependency of the dispersion relation and the rate of attenuation.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures (color