Long-Lived Structures in Fragile Glass-Forming Liquids

Abstract

We present molecular dynamics results for the existence of long-lived clusters near the glass transition in a two component, two-dimensional Lennard-Jones supercooled liquid. Several properties of this system are similar to a mean-field glass-forming liquid near the spinodal. This similarity suggests that the glass “transition” in the supercooled liquid is associated with an incipient thermodynamic instability. Our results also suggest that single particle properties are not relevant for characterizing the instability, but are relevant to the kinetic transition that occurs at a lower temperature than the glass transition.