Building a “trap model” of glassy dynamics from a local structural predictor of rearrangements

Abstract Here we introduce a variation of the trap model of glasses based on softness, a local structural variable identified by machine learning, in supercooled liquids. Softness is a particle- based quantity that reflects the local structural environment of a particle and characterizes the energy barrier for the particle to rearrange. As in the trap model, we treat each particle’s softness, and hence energy barrier, as evolving independently. We show that such a model reproduces many qualitative features of softness, and therefore makes qualitatively reasonable predictions of behaviors such as the dependence of fragility on density in a model supercooled liquid. We also show failures of this simple model, indicating features of the dynamics of softness that may only be explained by correlations.