Mechanical responses and stress fluctuations of a supercooled liquid in a sheared non-equilibrium state

Viscoelastic relaxation and topological fluctuations in glass-forming liquids

A method for characterizing the topological fluctuations in liquids is proposed. This approach exploits the concept of the weighted gyration tensor of a collection of particles and permits the definition of a local configurational unit (LCU). The first principal axis of the gyration tensor serves as the director of the LCU, which can be tracked and analyzed by molecular dynamics simulations. Analysis of moderately supercooled Kob-Andersen mixtures suggests that orientational relaxation of the LCU closely follows viscoelastic relaxation and exhibits a two-stage behavior. The slow relaxing component of the LCU corresponds to the structural, Maxwellian mechanical relaxation. Additionally, it is found that the mean curvature of the LCUs is approximately zero at the Maxwell relaxation time with the Gaussian curvature being negative. This observation implies that structural relaxation occurs when the configurationally stable and destabilized regions interpenetrate each other in a bicontinuous manner. Finally, the mean and Gaussian curvatures of the LCUs can serve as reduced variables for the shear stress correlation, providing a compelling proof of the close connection between viscoelastic relaxation and topological fluctuations in glass-forming liquids.

Single active particle in a harmonic potential: Question about the existence of the Jarzynski relation

The interest in active matter stimulates the need to generalize thermodynamic description and relations to active matter systems, which are intrinsically out of equilibrium. One important example is the Jarzynski relation, which links the exponential average of work done in an arbitrary process connecting two equilibrium states with the difference of the free energies of these states. Using a simple model system, a single thermal active Ornstein-Uhlenbeck particle in a harmonic potential, we show that if the standard stochastic thermodynamics definition of work is used, the Jarzynski relation is not generally valid for processes connecting stationary states of active matter systems.

Molecular dynamics simulation of electrokinetic flow of an aqueous electrolyte solution in nanochannels

Electrokinetic flows of an aqueous NaCl solution in nanochannels with negatively charged surfaces are studied using molecular dynamics simulations. The four transport coefficients that characterize the response to weak electric and pressure fields, namely, the coefficients for the electrical current in response to the electric field (M(jj)) and the pressure field (M(jm)), and those for the mass flow in response to the same fields (M(mj) and M(mm)), are obtained in the linear regime using a Green-Kubo approach. Nonequilibrium simulations with explicit external fields are also carried out, and the current and mass flows are directly obtained. The two methods exhibit good agreement even for large external field strengths, and Onsager's reciprocal relation (M(jm) = M(mj)) is numerically confirmed in both approaches. The influence of the surface charge density on the flow is also considered. The values of the transport coefficients are found to be smaller for larger surface charge density, because the counter-ions strongly bound near the channel surface interfere with the charge and mass flows. A reversal of the streaming current and of the reciprocal electro-osmotic flow, with a change of sign of M(mj) due to the excess co-ions, takes places for very high surface charge density.

Dependence of the atomic level Green-Kubo stress correlation function on wavevector and frequency: molecular dynamics results from a model liquid

We report on a further investigation of a new method that can be used to address vibrational dynamics and propagation of stress waves in liquids. The method is based on the decomposition of the macroscopic Green-Kubo stress correlation function into the atomic level stress correlation functions. This decomposition, as was demonstrated previously for a model liquid studied in molecular dynamics simulations, reveals the presence of stress waves propagating over large distances and a structure that resembles the pair density function. In this paper, by performing the Fourier transforms of the atomic level stress correlation functions, we elucidate how the lifetimes of the stress waves and the ranges of their propagation depend on their frequency, wavevector, and temperature. These results relate frequency and wavevector dependence of the generalized viscosity to the character of propagation of the shear stress waves. In particular, the results suggest that an increase in the value of the frequency dependent viscosity at low frequencies with decrease of temperature is related to the increase in the ranges of propagation of the stress waves of the corresponding low frequencies. We found that the ranges of propagation of the shear stress waves of frequencies less than half of the Einstein frequency extend well beyond the nearest neighbor shell even above the melting temperature. The results also show that the crossover from quasilocalized to propagating behavior occurs at frequencies usually associated with the Boson peak.

General constitutive model for supercooled liquids: anomalous transverse wave propagation

A transverse acoustic wave propagates through supercooled liquids in an anomalous manner: for a macroscopic wave number k, the wave propagates long distances, as in elastic solids, whereas it attenuates rapidly for a mesoscopic to microscopic wave number k, as in viscous liquids. In this work, we theoretically describe this anomalous wave propagation using the hydrodynamics of the two-mode Maxwell constitutive model, which were determined independently from the mechanical properties under oscillatory shear strains. To ensure that the Maxwell model can be applied down to a microscopic length scale, we extended it to a k-dependent equation, taking into account the recently reported k dependences of the shear viscosity and modulus [A. Furukawa and H. Tanaka, Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 135703 (2009); A. Furukawa H. Tanaka Phys. Rev. E 84, 061503 (2011)]. The anomalous wave propagation in supercooled liquids can also be understood in terms of a linear coupling of many independent normal modes, as in amorphous solids.

Effective temperature for sheared suspensions: a route towards closures for migration in bidisperse suspension

By extending the concept of an effective temperature, earlier introduced for sheared monodisperse suspensions, we propose a continuum theory for sheared bidisperse suspensions. We show the theory for sheared suspensions can be constructed from the theory for Brownian suspensions by replacing the temperature with the effective temperature. Furthermore, we explore the validity of closure relations based on mean field/free volume theory, by comparison with experimental data obtained for Brownian bidisperse suspensions. In a recent paper, we have shown that the new theory, combined with the discussed closure relations, is indeed a predictive theory.