Dynamic aspects of the liquid-liquid phase transformation in silicon.

First principles molecular dynamics simulations are used to characterize dynamic properties of supercooled liquid silicon across the liquid-liquid phase transition. Our results evidence the presence of a boson peak in the terahertz frequency range for the low-density liquid and support the scenario of a fragile-to-strong transition. The analysis of the collective excitations shows that its origin is due to a coupling of the longitudinal and transverse acoustic modes localized on the nanometer scale and can be attributed to collective vibrations of connected tetrahedra.