Shear waves in a supercooled liquid

Abstract

The decay of transverse current correlation functions in a supercooled liquid is studied by taking into account the mode coupling effects due to dominant density fluctuations. At higher densities the large mode coupling contributions due to cooperative dynamics can sustain propagating shear waves in the liquid. The crossover from a diffusive to oscillatory behavior of the shear mode is analyzed. We compute the speed of the shear wave in the liquid phase as well as the ideal glassy phase described in the self consistent mode coupling theory. The qualitative behavior is in agreement with the computer simulation results and experiments.