Growing Correlation Length on Cooling Below the Onset of Caging in a Simulated Glass-Forming Liquid
N. Lacevic, F.W. Starr, T.B. Schroder, V.N. Novikov, S.C. Glotzer
Abstract
We present a calculation of a fourth-order, time-dependent density correlation function that measures higher-order spatiotemporall correlations of the density of a liquid. From molecular dynamics simulations of a glass-forming Lennard-Jones liquid, we find that the characteristic length scale of this function has a maximum as a function of time which increases steadily beyond the characteristic length of the static pair correlation function g(r) in the temperature range approaching the mode coupling temperature from above.