Dynamical Transition in a Dense Fluid Approaching Structural Arrest

Molecular-dynamics results on isothermally compressed liquids in the metastable region indicate a broad transition where an increasingly slowly relaxing component (nondecaying on the time scale of simulation) appears in the time-dependent structure factor and the diffusivity gradually vanishes in an Arrhenius-type manner. The observed dynamical behavior, clearly signifying the onset of structural arrest, appears to be the manifestation of nonlinear density fluctuations which have been shown recently to lead to a liquid-glass transition.