DIFFUSION, VISCOSITY AND STRUCTURAL SLOWING DOWN IN SOFT SPHERE ALLOYS NEAR THE KINETIC GLASS-TRANSITION

The kinetic glass transition in a binary alloy, modelled by two species of atoms interacting via an inverse-12 "soft sphere" pair potential, is studied by a series of careful molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Comparison with previous work shows that the cooling rate of the simulated quenches has practically no influence on the observed dynamical behaviour near the transition. It is shown that the shear viscosity and the self diffusion constants of the two species are reasonably well correlated via the Stokes-Einstein relation over a wide range of temperatures in the supercooled liquid. The wavenumber dependence of the order parameters characterizing the (nearly) frozen structure, agrees reasonably well with the result of mode-coupling calculations.