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Anomalous glassy relaxation near the isotropic-nematic phase transition

Prasanth P. Jose·Dwaipayan Chakrabarti·Biman Bagchi
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Abstract

Dynamical heterogeneity in a system of Gay-Berne ellipsoids near its isotropic-nematic (I-N) transition and also in an equimolar mixture of Lennard-Jones spheres and Gay-Berne ellipsoids in deeply supercooled regime is probed by the time evolution of non-Gaussian parameter (NGP). The appearance of a dominant second peak in the rotational NGP near the I-N transition signals the growth of pseudonematic domains. Surprisingly such a second peak is instead observed in the translational NGP for glassy binary mixture. Localization of orientational motion near the I-N transition is found to be responsible for the observed anomalous orientational relaxation.

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Prasanth P. Jose, Dwaipayan Chakrabarti, Biman Bagchi. 2005-08-01. Anomalous glassy relaxation near the isotropic-nematic phase transition. https://doi.org/10.1103/physreve.71.030701

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