Formation of large-scale icosahedral clusters in a simple liquid approaching the glass transition

A number of singularities observed in super-cooled liquids approaching the glass transition point are commonly interpreted as indicating spatial heterogeneity. This conjecture assumes that the whole volume is decomposed into structurally distinct domains. In simple super-cooled liquids, the assumed domain structure is usually associated with icosahedral clustering; however, no evidence for growing length scale of icosahedral ordering in a super-cooled liquid has been found so far. We present a molecular dynamics simulation demonstrating formation of extended icosahedral configurations in a simple monatomic liquid approaching the glass transition temperature. An important observation is that these configurations show a tendency for low-dimensional growth.