Feasibility of a single-parameter description of equilibrium viscous liquid dynamics

Abstract

Molecular dynamics results for the dynamic Prigogine-Defay ratio are presented for two glass-forming liquids, thus evaluating the experimentally relevant quantity for testing whether metastable-equilibrium liquid dynamics is described by a single parameter to a good approximation. For the Kob-Andersen binary Lennard-Jones mixture as well as for an asymmetric dumbbell model liquid, a single-parameter description works quite well. This is confirmed by time-domain results where it is found that energy and pressure fluctuations are strongly correlated on the α time scale in the constant-volume, constant-temperature ensemble; similarly, energy and volume fluctuations correlate strongly in the constant-pressure, constant-temperature ensemble. © 2008 The American Physical Society.