From coupled elementary units to the complexity of the glass transition

Rehwald C, Rubner O, Heuer A

Abstract

Supercooled liqs. display fascinating properties upon cooling such as the emergence of dynamic length scales. Different models strongly vary with respect to the choice of the elementary subsystems as well as their mutual coupling. Here we show via computer simulations of a glass former that both ingredients can be identified via anal. of finite-size effects within the continuous-time random walk framework. The subsystems already contain complete information about thermodn. and diffusivity, whereas the coupling dets. structural relaxation and the emergence of dynamic length scales. [on SciFinder(R)]