Characterizing Dynamical Heterogeneity in a Supercooled Glass-Forming Diatomic Liquid

We use molecular dynamics simulations to investigate a 3D supercooled liquid of diatomic molecules interacting via the Lennard-Jones potential. We simulate the system for temperatures approaching the glass transition and verify that the system does not crystallize by measuring local order parameters and correlation functions. We use the overlap to study the translational dynamics and introduce a rotational overlap measure to examine the orientational dynamics as the system slows down. We investigate the heterogeneous dynamics for both types of degrees of freedom and characterize the geometry of the heterogeneous regions.