The Slowdowns of Water Dynamics when Approaching a Glass Transition or a Solid Interface: A Common Rationale

Abstract

Performing molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate the enormous slowdowns of water dynamics when approaching a glass transition or a solid interface. We show that both effects can be described on common grounds within a theoretical framework, which was recently proposed by Schweizer et al. and considers coupled local hopping and elastic distortion. For confined water, we correctly describe the variation of the alpha-relaxation time tau_alpha as a function of both temperature and position with respect to the interface. Exploiting our knowledge of a cooperative length scale xi(T) from the confinement studies, we quantitatively rationalize the glassy slowdown, tau_alpha(T), and the Stokes-Einstein breakdown of bulk water. For both confined and bulk liquid, variations of the alpha-relaxation time are intimately related to changes of the cage-rattling amplitude.