Amorphous Solidification of a Supercooled Liquid in the Limit of Rapid Cooling

Abstract

We monitor the transformation of a liquid into an amorphous solid in simulations of a glass forming liquid by measuring the variation of a structural order parameter with either changing temperature or potential energy to establish the influence of the cooling rate on amorphous solidification. We show that the latter representation, unlike the former, exhibits no significant dependence on cooling rate. This independence extends to the limit of instantaneous quenches which we find can accurately reproduce the solidification observed during slow cooling. We conclude that amorphous solidification is an expression of the topography of the energy landscape and present the relevant topographic measures.