COOLING PROCESSES FOR A 1D STRUCTURAL GLASS MODEL

The dependence of the residual energy eres on the cooling rate gamma is investigated numerically for a one-dimensional chain of classical particles with anharmonic competing interactions. Due to the complex landscape of the potential energy of the system, with exponentially many barriers and valleys, eres( gamma ) shows a non-trivial behaviour. For large cooling rates eres is independent of gamma . In the intermediate gamma -range some plateaux are found which can be understood by means of a simple double well potential and for small gamma the authors find a power-law behaviour for eres( gamma ), which supports a conjecture by Grest et al. (1987). This power-law behaviour can be explained analytically by means of a kinetic Ising model and the correspondence of the exponents from the analytical theory and those from the simulation is fair for a certain range of the potential parameters.