How real are liquid groundstates? Ultra-fast crystal growth and the susceptibility of energy minima in liquids

G Sun and P Harrowell, JOURNAL OF CHEMICAL PHYSICS, 154, 154503 (2021).

DOI: 10.1063/5.0049009

We calculate the degree to which the final structure of the local groundstate in a liquid is a function of the strength of a perturbing potential applied during energy minimization. This structural susceptibility is shown to correlate well with the observed tendency of the liquid adjacent to a crystal interface to exhibit a crystalline groundstate, a feature that has been strongly linked to the observation of ultra-fast crystal growth in pure metals and ionic melts. It is shown that the structural susceptibility increases dramatically as the interaction potential between atoms is softened.

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