0000000000811230
AUTHOR
O. Pilla
showing 2 related works from this author
Transitions between metastable states in silica clusters
1999
Relaxation phenomena in glasses can be related to jump processes between different minima of the potential energy in the configuration space. These transitions play a key role in the low temperature regime, giving rise to tunneling systems responsible for the anomalous specific heat and thermal conductivity in disordered solids with respect to crystals. By using a recently developed numerical algorithm, we study the potential energy landscape of silica clusters, taking as a starting point the location of first order saddle points. This allows us to find a great number of adjacent minima. We analyze the degree of cooperativity of these transitions and the connection of physical properties wi…
Energy and entropy barriers of two-level systems in argon clusters: An energy landscape approach
1999
Abstract Free argon clusters containing up to 160 atoms have been studied by means of a numerical algorithm for finding thousands of adjacent minima connected through a first-order saddle point. Many minimum-saddle-minimum systems have been found to be good candidates for forming two-level systems. The ground state splitting has been evaluated by taking into account both energy and entropy barriers. The role of the latter in auenching or enhancing the ground state splitting is discussed with the aid of a simple model potential.