Slow dynamics and stress relaxation in a liquid as an elastic medium

We propose a new framework to discuss the transition from exponential relaxation in a liquid to the regime of slow dynamics. For the purposes of stress relaxation, we show that a liquid can be treated as an elastic medium. We discuss that, on lowering the temperature, the feed-forward interaction mechanism between local relaxation events becomes operative, and results in slow relaxation.

K Trachenko · 2006