2011/09/30 by Robert L. Jack, Lester O. Hedges, Juan P. Garrahan +1 · 56 citations
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Chemical physics #Degrees of freedom (physics and chemistry) #Energy landscape #Material Dynamics and Properties #Materials science #Metastability #Phase (matter) #Physics #Quantum mechanics #Relaxation (psychology) #Sampling (signal processing) #Statistical physics #Theoretical and Computational Physics #Thermal #Thermal equilibrium #Thermodynamics #Trajectory #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.107.275702
published in Physical Review Letters 107(27), 275702 (American Physical Society) · Minor revisions in light of referee comments. 5 pages, 4 figs
openalex publication_date 2011/12/27 · arxiv created 2011/12/28 · arxiv updated 2011/12/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We prepare metastable glassy states in a model glass former made of Lennard-Jones particles by sampling biased ensembles of trajectories with low dynamical activity. These trajectories form an inactive dynamical phase whose "fast" vibrational degrees of freedom are maintained at thermal equilibrium by contact with a heat bath, while the "slow" structural degrees of freedom are located in deep valleys of the energy landscape. We examine the relaxation to equilibrium and the vibrational properties of these metastable states. The glassy states we prepare by our trajectory sampling method are very stable to thermal fluctuations and also more mechanically rigid than low-temperature equilibrated configurations.