Entropic Timescales of Dynamic Heterogeneity in Supercooled Liquid

Abstract

Non-Gaussian displacement distributions are universal predictors of dynamic heterogeneity in slowly varying environments. Here, we explore heterogeneous dynamics in supercooled liquid using molecular dynamics simulations and show the efficiency of the information-theoretic measure in quantifying dynamic heterogeneity over the widely used moment-based quantifications of nonGaussianity. Our analysis shows that the heterogeneity quantified by the negentropy is significantly different from the one obtained using the conventional approach that considers deviation from Gaussianity up to lower-order moments. Further, we extract the timescales of dynamic heterogeneity using the two methods and show that the differential changes diverge as the system experiences strong intermittency near the glass transition.