Nature of vibrational eigenmodes in topologically disordered solids

We use a local projectional analysis method to investigate the effect of topological disorder on the vibrational dynamics in a model glass simulated by molecular dynamics. Evidence is presented that the vibrational eigenmodes in the glass are generically related to the corresponding eigenmodes of its crystalline counterpart via disorder-induced level repelling and hybridization effects. It is argued that the effect of topological disorder in the glass on the dynamical matrix can be simulated by introducing positional disorder in a crystalline counterpart.