Nonlocal Nature of the Viscous Transport in Supercooled Liquids: Complex Fluid Approach to Supercooled Liquids

Using molecular dynamics simulations, we show clear evidence for the nonlocal mesoscopic nature of the anomalous viscous transport in a supercooled liquid and its direct link to dynamic heterogeneity: (i) a distinct crossover from the microscopic to macroscopic viscosity at a mesoscopic length scale, which is comparable to the correlation length of dynamic heterogeneity and grows with an increase in the degree of supercooling; (ii) a strong anisotropic decay of the shear-stress autocorrelation at a finite wave number, which indicates intrinsic decoupling between the longitudinal and transverse dynamics. Our findings suggest the fundamental importance of the growing dynamic correlation in anomalous transport and shed new light on the nature of slow dynamics.