On non-phononic modes and glassy dynamics

Abstract

The relationship between vibrational modes and glassy dynamics has been an important and controversial topic of study for many decades. We introduce a family of glass-forming model potentials that have identical molecular and swap dynamics but different low-frequency vibrational modes. In sufficiently small systems low frequency modes do not hybridize with phonons, and this enables us to study their statistical properties independently. We investigate i) the role of the optimization algorithm used to find a minimum; ii) that of the finite-size effects; iii) that of the truncation of the interaction potential; and, iv) that of the parent temperature. We find that models with identical supercooled liquid structure and dynamics can have dramatically different non-phononic vibrational modes at low frequency, based on how the potential is truncated. These findings challenge ideas relating the low-frequency non-phononic vibrational modes with the slow supercooled liquid relaxation.

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BibTeX RIS

BibTeX

@misc{mocanu2026nonphononic,
  title = {{On non-phononic modes and glassy dynamics}},
  author = {Felix C. Mocanu and Dmytro Khomenko and Matteo Paoluzzi and Giancarlo Ruocco and Walter Schirmacher and Grzegorz Szamel and Francesco Zamponi},
  howpublished = {arXiv},
  year = {2026},
  month = sep,
  doi = {10.48550/arxiv.2609.12665},
  eprint = {2609.12665},
  archivePrefix = {arXiv},
  url = {https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.12665},
}

RIS

TY  - UNPB
TI  - On non-phononic modes and glassy dynamics
AU  - Felix C. Mocanu
AU  - Dmytro Khomenko
AU  - Matteo Paoluzzi
AU  - Giancarlo Ruocco
AU  - Walter Schirmacher
AU  - Grzegorz Szamel
AU  - Francesco Zamponi
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/09/11
PB  - arXiv
DO  - 10.48550/arxiv.2609.12665
UR  - https://arxiv.org/abs/2609.12665
AB  - The relationship between vibrational modes and glassy dynamics has been an important and controversial topic of study for many decades. We introduce a family of glass-forming model potentials that have identical molecular and swap dynamics but different low-frequency vibrational modes. In sufficiently small systems low frequency modes do not hybridize with phonons, and this enables us to study their statistical properties independently. We investigate i) the role of the optimization algorithm used to find a minimum; ii) that of the finite-size effects; iii) that of the truncation of the interaction potential; and, iv) that of the parent temperature. We find that models with identical supercooled liquid structure and dynamics can have dramatically different non-phononic vibrational modes at low frequency, based on how the potential is truncated. These findings challenge ideas relating the low-frequency non-phononic vibrational modes with the slow supercooled liquid relaxation.
ER  -

Abstract

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