Anomalous Crystallization as a Signature of the Fragile-to-Strong Transition in Metallic Glass-Forming Liquids

Dynamic and thermodynamic crossover scenarios in the Kob-Andersen mixture: Insights from multi-CPU and multi-GPU simulations

The physical behavior of glass-forming liquids presents complex features of both dynamic and thermodynamic nature. Some studies indicate the presence of thermodynamic anomalies and of crossovers in the dynamic properties, but their origin and degree of universality is difficult to assess. Moreover, conventional simulations are barely able to cover the range of temperatures at which these crossovers usually occur. To address these issues, we simulate the Kob-Andersen Lennard-Jones mixture using efficient protocols based on multi-CPU and multi-GPU parallel tempering. Our setup enables us to probe the thermodynamics and dynamics of the liquid at equilibrium well below the critical temperature of the mode-coupling theory, [Formula: see text]. We find that below [Formula: see text] the analysis is hampered by partial crystallization of the metastable liquid, which nucleates extended regions populated by large particles arranged in an fcc structure. By filtering out crystalline samples, we reveal that the specific heat grows in a regular manner down to [Formula: see text] . Possible thermodynamic anomalies suggested by previous studies can thus occur only in a region of the phase diagram where the system is highly metastable. Using the equilibrium configurations obtained from the parallel tempering simulations, we perform molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo simulations to probe the equilibrium dynamics down to [Formula: see text]. A temperature-derivative analysis of the relaxation time and diffusion data allows us to assess different dynamic scenarios around [Formula: see text]. Hints of a dynamic crossover come from analysis of the four-point dynamic susceptibility. Finally, we discuss possible future numerical strategies to clarify the nature of crossover phenomena in glass-forming liquids.

Structures of Local Rearrangements in Soft Colloidal Glasses

We image local structural rearrangements in soft colloidal glasses under small periodic perturbations induced by thermal cycling. Local structural entropy S_{2} positively correlates with observed rearrangements in colloidal glasses. The high S_{2} values of the rearranging clusters in glasses indicate that fragile regions in glasses are structurally less correlated, similar to structural defects in crystalline solids. Slow-evolving high S_{2} spots are capable of predicting local rearrangements long before the relaxations occur, while fluctuation-created high S_{2} spots best correlate with local deformations right before the rearrangement events. Local free volumes are also found to correlate with particle rearrangements at extreme values, although the ability to identify relaxation sites is substantially lower than S_{2}. Our experiments provide an efficient structural identifier for the fragile regions in glasses and highlight the important role of structural correlations in the physics of glasses.