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Structural changes in the Lennard-Jones supercooled liquid and ideal glass: An improved integral equation for the replica method

Jean-Marc Bomont* and Jean-Louis Bretonnet

Dino Costa

Giorgio Pastore

  • Dipartimento di Scienze Matematiche e Informatiche, Scienze Fisiche e Scienze della Terra, Università degli Studi di Messina, Viale F. Stagno d'Alcontres 31, 98166 Messina, Italy

  • *Contact author: jean-marc.bomont@univ-lorraine.fr
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Phys. Rev. E 113, 025425 – Published 26 February, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/ndvv-d1mc

Abstract

Framing the glass formation within standard statistical mechanics is an outstanding problem of condensed matter theory. To add insight, we investigate the structural properties of the Lennard-Jones fluid in the very-low temperature regime by using a replicated version of the refined HMSA theory of the liquid state combined with an appropriate split of the pair potential [Bomont and Bretonnet, J. Chem. Phys. 114, 4141 (2001)]. Our scheme allows one to reach an unprecedented low-temperature domain within both the supercooled liquid and the ideal-glass phase. Therein, a density-dependent temperature is identified, whereupon the radial distribution function experiences clear-cut structural changes, insofar as an additional peak develops in between the main and the second peaks. Such a structural feature points to a local structure of the Lennard-Jones ideal glass with an fcc-like short-range order, in the absence of any long-range order.

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Phys. Rev. E 113, 025425– Published 26 February, 2026
  • Received 18 October 2025
  • Accepted 26 January 2026
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