Microscopic Picture of Aging in SiO2

We investigate the aging dynamics of amorphous SiO2 via molecular dynamics simulations of a quench from a high temperature Ti to a lower temperature Tf.We obtain a microscopic picture of aging dynamics by analyzing single particle trajectories, identifying jump events when a particle escapes the cage formed by its neighbors, and determining how these jumps depend on the waiting time tw, the time elapsed since the temperature quench to Tf. We find that the only tw-dependent microscopic quantity is the number of jumping particles per unit time, which decreases with age. Similar to previous studies for fragile glass formers, we show here for the strong glass former SiO2 that neither the distribution of jump lengths nor the distribution of times spent in the cage are tw dependent.We conclude that the microscopic aging dynamics is surprisingly similar for fragile and strong glass formers.

Temperature-Dependent Defect Dynamics in the Network Glass SiO2

We investigate the long time dynamics of a strong glass former, SiO2, below the glass transition temperature by averaging single-particle trajectories over time windows which comprise roughly 100 particle oscillations. The structure on this coarse-grained time scale is very well defined in terms of coordination numbers, allowing us to identify ill-coordinated atoms, which are called defects in the following. The most numerous defects are O-O neighbors, whose lifetimes are comparable to the equilibration time at low temperature. On the other hand, SiO and OSi defects are very rare and short lived. The lifetime of defects is found to be strongly temperature dependent, consistent with activated processes. Single-particle jumps give rise to local structural rearrangements. We show that in SiO2 these structural rearrangements are coupled to the creation or annihilation of defects, giving rise to very strong correlations of jumping atoms and defects.