The shells of atomic structure in metallic glasses

Abstract We proposed a scheme to describe the spatial correlation between two atoms in metallic glasses. Pair distribution function in a model iron was fully decomposed into several shells and can be presented as the spread of nearest neighbor correlation via distance. Moreover, angle distribution function can also be decomposed into groups. We demonstrate that there is close correlation between pair distribution function and angle distribution function for metallic glasses. We think that our results are very helpful understanding the atomic structure of metallic glasses.