Lester O Hedges and Juan P Garrahan 2008 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 41 324006 doi:10.1088/1751-8113/41/32/324006
Lester O Hedges and Juan P Garrahan
Show affiliationsTransitions between metabasins in supercooled liquids seem to occur through rapid collective particle rearrangements. These events have been called 'democratic' as they appear homogeneous over a significant number of particles. This could suggest that 'democratic' rearrangements are fundamentally distinct to those leading to dynamic heterogeneity. Here we show, however, that this apparent homogeneous particle motion can be explained solely in terms of dynamic facilitation, and is therefore intriniscally heterogeneous. We do so by studying metabasin transitions in facilitated spin models and constrained lattice gases. We find that metabasin transitions occur through a sequence of locally facilitated events taking place over a relatively short time frame. When observed on small enough spatial windows these events appear sudden and homogeneous. Our results indicate that metabasin transitions, while apparently homogeneous and 'democratic', are yet another manifestation of dynamical heterogeneity in glass formers.
82C20 Dynamic lattice systems (kinetic Ising, etc.) and systems on graphs
Issue 32 (15 August 2008)
Received 12 November 2007, in final form 29 January 2008
Published 30 July 2008
Lester O Hedges and Juan P Garrahan 2008 J. Phys. A: Math. Theor. 41 324006
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