Characterizing order in amorphous systems

François Sausset, Dov Levine

Published 2011-03-15, updated 2011-07-19Version 2

We measure and compare three correlation lengths proposed to describe the extent of structural order in amorphous systems. In particular, the recently proposed "patch correlation length" is measured as a function of temperature and fragility and shown to be comparable with other measures. In addition, we demonstrate that the patch method also allows us to characterize the symmetries of the local order without any a priori knowledge of it.