Transitions between metastable states in silica clusters

摘要: Relaxation phenomena in glasses can be related to jump processes between different minima of the potential energy configuration space. These transitions play a key role low temperature regime, giving rise tunneling systems responsible for anomalous specific heat and thermal conductivity disordered solids with respect crystals. By using recently developed numerical algorithm, we study landscape silica clusters, taking as starting point location first order saddle points. This allows us find great number adjacent minima. We analyze degree cooperativity these connection physical properties topology also identify two-level (pairs constituting system) calculate quantum mechanical ground state splitting by means WKB approximation.