2012/10/03 by Gcina A. Mavimbela, Mavimbela, Gcina A., Azita Parsaeian +3
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Disordered Systems and Neural Networks (cond-mat.dis-nn) #FOS: Physical sciences #Glass properties and applications #Liquid Crystal Research Advancements #Material Dynamics and Properties #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #cond-mat.dis-nn #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1210.1249
18 pages, 7 figures. Minor changes to address referee questions
openalex publication_date 2012/10/03 · arxiv created 2015/04/30 · arxiv updated 2015/05/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The presence of fluctuating local relaxation times, τr(t) has been used for some time as a conceptual tool to describe dynamical heterogeneities in glass-forming systems. However, until now no general method is known to extract the full space and time dependent τr(t) from experimental or numerical data. Here we report on a new method for determining the local phase field, ϕr(t) = ∫t dt'/τr(t') from snapshots \r(ti)\i=1...M of the positions of the particles in a system, and we apply it to extract ϕr(t) and τr(t) from numerical simulations. By studying how the phase field depends on the number of snapshots, we find that it is a well defined quantity. By studying fluctuations of the phase field, we find that they describe heterogeneities well at long distance scales.