Predicting the long time dynamic heterogeneity in a supercooled liquid on the basis of short time heterogeneities

We report that the local Debye-Waller factor in a simulated 2D glass-forming mixture exhibits significant spatial heterogeneities and that these short-time fluctuations provide an excellent predictor of the spatial distribution of the long-time dynamic propensities [Phys. Rev. Lett. 93, 135701 (2004)]. In contrast, the potential energy per particle of the inherent structure does not correlate well with the spatially distributed dynamics.