"Structural features underlying the dynamics of supercooled dynamics"
We apply instantaneous shear deformations to supercooled liquids to investigate
the correlations between the soft modes of the inherent structure belonging to
the initial and final configurations and the isoconfigurational Debye-Waller factors
of the initial thermal configuration, as a function of the temperature and
of the strain amplitude. The spatial distributions of non-affine displacements
(NAD) characterizing such response are correlated to the dynamical heterogeneities of the supercooled
liquid, suggesting that particles in regions of large NADs are likely to be more
mobile than those belonging to small values of NADs.
Moreover, our normal mode analysis shows that cooperative regions in NAD are
strongly correlated to the low energy soft modes of the inherent structure of the
supercooled liquid, responsible for the onset of plasticity in the amorphous solid.
In addition, we also observe a well-defined critical deformation amplitude, above which
these correlations are lost.