Structural relaxation in quantum supercooled liquids: A mode-coupling approach

Abstract

We study supercooled dynamics in quantum hard-sphere liquid using quantum mode-coupling formulation. In the moderate quantum regime, classical cage effects lead to slower dynamics compared to strongly quantum regime, where tunneling overcomes classical caging, leading to faster relaxation. As a result, the glass transition critical density can become significantly higher than for the classical liquids. Perturbative approach is used to solve time dependent quantum mode-coupling equations to study in detail the dynamics of the supercooled liquid in moderate quantum regime. Similar to the classical case, relaxation time shows power-law increase with increasing density in the supercooled regime. However, the power-law exponent is found to be dependent on the quantumness; it increases linearly as the quantumness is increased in the moderate quantum regime.