Theory of the Structure Factor of Metallic Glasses

Abstract

A recently developed Landau description of short-range icosahedral order in supercooled liquids and metallic glasses is used to calculate density correlation functions in these systems. The theory predicts frustration-broadened peaks in the structure factor, at positions determined by the symmetries of an ideal, curved-space icosahedral crystal. The results provide a good fit to experiments on vapor-deposited metal films.