title: Understanding Atomic-Scale Features of Low Temperature-Relaxation Dynamics in Metallic Glasses.
abstract: Being a key feature of a glassy state, low temperature relaxation has important implications on the mechanical behavior of glasses; however, the mechanism of low temperature relaxation is still an open issue, which has been debated for decades. By systematically investigating the influences of cooling rate and pressure on low temperature relaxation in the Zr50Cu50metallic glasses, it is found that even though pressure does induce pronounced local structural change, the low temperature-relaxation behavior of the metallic glass is affected mainly by cooling rate, not by pressure. According to the atomic displacement and connection mode analysis, we further demonstrate that the low temperature relaxation is dominated by the dispersion degree of fast dynamic atoms rather than the most probable atomic nonaffine displacement. Our finding provides the direct atomic-level evidence that the intrinsic heterogeneity is the key factor that determines the low temperature-relaxation behavior of the metallic glasses.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100190, China.|School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100094, China.
authors.forename: B
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Beijing Computational Science Research Center , Beijing 100094, China.
authors.forename: B S
authors.initials: BS
authors.lastname: Shang
authors.affiliation: Northwest Institute for Nonferrous Metal Research , Xian 710016, China.
authors.forename: X Q
authors.initials: XQ
authors.lastname: Gao
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: W H
authors.initials: WH
authors.lastname: Wang
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100190, China.
authors.forename: H Y
authors.initials: HY
authors.lastname: Bai
authors.affiliation: Institute of Physics, Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100190, China.|School of Physical Sciences, University of Chinese Academy of Sciences , Beijing 100094, China.
authors.forename: M X
authors.initials: MX
authors.lastname: Pan
authors.affiliation: Beijing Computational Science Research Center , Beijing 100094, China.
authors.forename: P F
authors.initials: PF
authors.lastname: Guan