Decoupling phenomena in supercooled liquids: signatures in the energy landscape

Abstract

A significant deviation from the Debye model of rotational diffusion in the dynamics of orientational degrees of freedom in an equimolar mixture of ellipsoids of revolution and spheres is found to begin at a temperature at which the average inherent structure energy of the system starts falling with drop in temperature. We argue that this onset temperature corresponds to the emergence of the a process as a distinct mode of orientational relaxation. Further, we find that the coupling between rotational and translational diffusion breaks down at a still lower temperature where a change occurs in the temperature dependence of the average inherent structure energy.