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A stroll in the energy landscape

Antonio Scala·Luca Angelani·Roberto Di Leonardo·Giancarlo Ruocco·Francesco Sciortino
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Abstract

We review recent results on the potential energy landscape (PES) of model liquids. The role of saddle-points in the PES in connecting dynamics to statics is investigated, confirming that a change between minima-dominated and saddle-dominated regions of the PES explored in equilibrium happens around the Mode Coupling Temperature. The structure of the low-energy saddles in the basins is found to be simple and hierarchically organized; the presence of saddles nearby in energy to the local minima indicates that, at non-cryogenic temperatures, entropic bottlenecks limit the dynamics.

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Antonio Scala, Luca Angelani, Roberto Di Leonardo, Giancarlo Ruocco, Francesco Sciortino. 2012-11-23. A stroll in the energy landscape. https://doi.org/10.1080/13642810110085181

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