Dynamics of liquid silica as explained by properties of the potential energy landscape

A. Saksaengwijit, A. Heuer

Published 2006-01-12, updated 2006-05-22Version 2

The dynamics of silica displays an Arrhenius temperature dependence, classifying silica as a strong glass-former. Using recently developed concepts to analyse the potential energy landscape one can get a fundamental understanding of the long-range transport of silica. It can be expressed in terms of properties of the thermodynamics as well as local relaxation processes, thereby extending the phenomenological standard picture of a strong glass-former. The local relaxation processes are characterized by complex correlated sequences of bond breaking and reformation processes.