Defect Fluctuations and Lifetimes in Disordered Yukawa Systems

Abstract

We examine the time dependent defect fluctuations and lifetimes for a bidisperse disordered assembly of Yukawa particles. At high temperatures, the noise spectrum of fluctuations is white and the coordination number lifetimes have a stretched exponential distribution. At lower temperatures, the system dynamically freezes, the defect fluctuations exhibit a 1/f spectrum, and there is a power law distribution of the coordination number lifetimes. Our results indicate that topological defect fluctuations may be a useful way to characterize systems exhibiting dynamical heterogeneities.

6 pages, 5 postscript figures, new results added; version to appear in Phys. Rev. E