Unified Criterion for Temperature-Induced and Strain-Driven Glass Transitions in Metallic Glass

In a model metallic glass, we study the relaxation dynamics in both the linear and the nonlinear response regimes by numerical simulations of dynamical mechanical spectroscopy and analyze the atomic displacement statistics. We find that the primary (α) relaxation always takes place when the most probable atomic displacement reaches a critical fraction (∼20%) of the average interatomic distance, irrespective of whether the relaxation is induced by temperature (linear response) or by mechanical strain (nonlinear response). Such a unified scenario, analogous to the well-known Lindemann criterion for crystal melting, provides insight into the structural origin of the strain-induced glass-liquid transition.