We present a quantitative description of the thermodynamics in a supercooled binary Lennard-Jones liquid via the evaluation of the degeneracy of the inherent structures, i.e., of the number of potential energy basins in configuration space. We find that the contribution of the inherent structures to the free energy of the liquid almost completely decouples from the vibrational contribution. An important by-product of the presented analysis is the determination of the Kauzmann temperature for the studied system.

• Received 7 June 1999

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.83.3214