Condensed Matter & Surface Sciences

COLLOQUIUM

Katharina Vollmayr-Lee

Bucknell University

“Self-Organized Criticality Below The Glass Transition”

We study a binary Lennard-Jones mixture below the glass transition via molecular dynamics simulations. To investigate the dynamics of the system we define single particle jumps via their single particle trajectories. We present as a function of temperature the number of jumps, jumps size and waiting time between jumps. To study how the single particle jumps are correlated in time and space we identify clusters of cooperatively jumping particles. We find string-like clusters whose size is power-law distributed not only close to Tc but for ALL temperatures below Tc, indicating self-organized criticality which is suggestive of a freezing in of critical behavior.

Thursday, October 15, 2009

4:10 p.m. -- Walter Lecture Hall 245