Deformation of inherent structures to detect long-range correlations in supercooled liquids

We propose deformations of inherent structures as a suitable tool for detecting structural changes underlying the onset of cooperativity in supercooled liquids. The non-affine displacement (NAD) field resulting from the applied deformation shows characteristic differences between the high temperature liquid and supercooled state, which are typically observed in dynamic quantities. The average magnitude of the NAD is very sensitive to temperature changes in the supercooled regime and is found to be strongly correlated with the inherent structure energy. In addition, the NAD field is characterized by a correlation length that increases upon lowering the temperature towards the supercooled regime. (C) 2012 American Institute of Physics. [http://dx.doi.org/10.1063/1.4732859]