Percolation Criticality of Amorphous-Amorphous Transitions in Compressed Glasses (opens in new tab)

The low-to-high-density transition in compressed silica glass is investigated using percolation theory. Large-scale molecular dynamics simulations of SiO$_2$ glasses, with system sizes of up to 10$^6$ atoms and pressures ranging from 0 to 35 GPa, were carried out to investigate the emergence of structural motifs and their growth to system-spanning length scales under compression. On this basis, we introduced long-range descriptors that complemen...