Apparent finite-size effects in the dynamics of supercooled liquids

Molecular dynamics simulations are performed for a supercooled simple liquid with changing the system size from N = 108 to 10(4) to examine possible finite-size effects. Although almost no systematic deviation is detected in the static pair correlation functions, it is demonstrated that the structural alpha relaxation in a small system becomes considerably slower than that in larger systems for temperatures below T-c at which the size of the cooperative particle motions becomes comparable to the unit cell length of the small system. The discrepancy increases with decreasing temperature.