Bruns Marian, Varnik Fathollah
Interdisciplinary Centre for Advanced Materials Simulation (ICAMS), Ruhr-University Bochum, 44801 Bochum, Germany.
Materials (Basel). 2022 Jan 22;15(3):829. doi: 10.3390/ma15030829.
We investigate the effect of low temperature (cryogenic) thermal cycling on a generic model glass and observe signature of rejuvenation in terms of per-particle potential energy distributions. Most importantly, these distributions become broader and its average values successively increase when applying consecutive thermal cycles. We show that linear dimension plays a key role for these effects to become visible, since we do only observe a weak effect for a cubic system of roughly one hundred particle diameter but observe strong changes for a rule-type geometry with the longest length being two thousand particle diameters. A consistent interpretation of this new finding is provided in terms of a competition between relaxation processes, which are inherent to glassy systems, and excitation due to thermal treatment. In line with our previous report (Bruns et al., PRR 3, 013234 (2021)), it is shown that, depending on the parameters of thermal cycling, rejuvenation can be either too weak to be detected or strong enough for a clear observation.
我们研究了低温（低温）热循环对通用模型玻璃的影响，并根据每个粒子的势能分布观察到了恢复活力的特征。最重要的是，当应用连续的热循环时，这些分布会变宽，其平均值会相继增加。我们表明，线性尺寸对于这些效应变得可见起着关键作用，因为对于一个大致为一百个粒子直径的立方系统，我们只观察到微弱的效应，但对于最长长度为两千个粒子直径的规则型几何结构，我们观察到了强烈的变化。根据玻璃态系统固有的弛豫过程与热处理引起的激发之间的竞争，对这一新发现提供了一致的解释。与我们之前的报告（布伦斯等人，《物理评论研究》3，013234（2021））一致，结果表明，根据热循环的参数，恢复活力可能太弱而无法检测到，也可能足够强以便清晰观察到。
