title: Evidence for compact cooperatively rearranging regions in a supercooled liquid.
abstract: We examine structural relaxation in a supercooled glass-forming liquid simulated by constant-energy constant-volume (NVE) molecular dynamics. Time correlations of the total kinetic energy fluctuations are used as a comprehensive measure of the system's approach to the ergodic equilibrium. We find that, under cooling, the total structural relaxation becomes delayed as compared with the decay of the component of the intermediate scattering function corresponding to the main peak of the structure factor. This observation can be explained by collective movements of particles preserving many-body structural correlations within compact three-dimensional (3D) cooperatively rearranging regions.
authors.affiliation: Department for Numerical Analysis and Computer Science, Royal Institute of Technology, S-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Elenius
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Dzugutov