title: Anomalous glassy relaxation near the isotropic-nematic phase transition.
abstract: Dynamical heterogeneity in a system of Gay-Berne ellipsoids near its isotropic-nematic (I-N) transition, and also in an equimolar mixture of Lennard-Jones spheres and Gay-Berne ellipsoids in deeply supercooled regime, is probed by the time evolution of non-Gaussian parameters (NGP). The appearance of a dominant second peak in the rotational NGP near the I-N transition signals the growth of pseudonematic domains. Surprisingly, such a second peak is instead observed in the translational NGP for the glassy binary mixture. Localization of orientational motion near the I-N transition is found to be responsible for the observed anomalous orientational relaxation.
authors.affiliation: Solid State and Structural Chemistry Unit, Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore.
authors.forename: Prasanth P
authors.initials: PP
authors.lastname: Jose
authors.forename: Dwaipayan
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Chakrabarti
authors.forename: Biman
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Bagchi