The glass state: characterizing energy landscape features

We probed the topologies imposed on configuration hyperspace by the potential energy function-the shapes of the constant potential energy manifolds-for the glassy state of monatomic Lennard-Jones matter, by following trajectories of constant potential energy. A prominent characteristic of this model matter is well-defined regions of confinement (pockets) in configuration hyperspace.

We found that there are constant potential energy hyperspace paths (tubes) between such pockets, applying even to paths linking glassy regions to crystalline regions of configuration hyperspace. Also, we found that glass and crystal pockets are interspersed. For monatomic Lennard-Jones matter at least, the transition from glass to crystal therefore does not have to involve the traversing of a potential energy barrier, as is usually assumed.