Glassy clusters: Relations between their dynamics and characteristic features of their energy landscape

Abstract

Based on a recently introduced metric for measuring distances between configurations, we introduce distance-energy (DE) plots to characterize the potential energy surface (PES) of clusters. Producing such plots is computationally feasible on the density functional (DFT) level since it requires only a set of a few hundred stable low energy configurations including the global minimum. By comparison with standard criteria based on disconnectivity graphs and on the dynamics of Lennard-Jones clusters we show that the DE plots convey the necessary information about the character of the potential energy surface and allow to distinguish between glassy and non-glassy systems. We then apply this analysis to real systems on the DFT level and show that both glassy and non-glassy clusters can be found in simulations. It however turns out that among our investigated clusters only those can be synthesized experimentally which exhibit a non-glassy landscape.