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arXiv · 1101.2293

Influence of the glass transition on the liquid-gas spinodal decomposition

Vincent Testard·Ludovic Berthier·Walter Kob
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Abstract

We use large-scale molecular dynamics simulations to study the kinetics of the liquid-gas phase separation if the temperature is lowered across the glass transition of the dense phase. We observe a gradual change from phase separated systems at high temperatures to nonequilibrium, gel-like structures that evolve very slowly at low temperatures. The microscopic mechanisms responsible for the coarsening strongly depend on temperature, and change from diffusive motion at high temperature to a strongly intermittent, heterogeneous and thermally activated dynamics at low temperature, leading to logarithmically slow growth of the typical domain size.

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Vincent Testard, Ludovic Berthier, Walter Kob. 2011-01-12. Influence of the glass transition on the liquid-gas spinodal decomposition. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.106.125702

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