Anomalous sound attenuation in Voronoi liquid.

The physics of simple fluids in the hydrodynamic limit and notably the connection between the proper microscopic scales and the macroscopic hydrodynamical description are nowadays well understood. In particular, the three peak shape of the dynamical structure factor S(k,ω) is a universal feature, as well as the k-dependence of the peak position (∝k) and width ∝k, the latter accounting for the sound attenuation rate. In this paper, we present a theoretical model of monodisperse fluid, whose interactions are defined via the Voronoi tessellations of the configurations [called the Voronoi liquid and first studied in Ruscher et al., Europhys. Lett. 112, 66003 (2015)], which displays at low temperatures a marked violation of the universal features of S(k,ω) with a sound attenuation rate only ∝k. This anomalous behaviour, which apparently violates the basic symmetries of the liquid state, is traced back to the existence of a time scale which is both short enough for the viscoelastic features of the liquid to impact the relaxational dynamics and however long enough for the momentum diffusion to be substantially slower than the sound propagation on that characteristic time.