Structural relaxation in a supercooled molecular liquid

Dipartimento di Fisica and INFM, Center for Statistical Mechanics and Complexity Università di Roma “La Sapienza” - Piazzale Aldo Moro 2, I-00185, Roma, Italy

Received: 6 March 2003
Accepted: 8 August 2003

Abstract

We perform molecular-dynamics simulations of a molecular system in supercooled states for different values of inertia parameters to provide evidence that the long-time dynamics depends only on the equilibrium structure. This observation is consistent with the prediction of the mode-coupling theory for the glass transition and with the hypothesis that the potential energy-landscape controls the slow dynamics. We also find that the dynamical properties at intermediate wave number depend on the spatial correlation of the molecule's geometrical center.