Fig. 1: Structure formation during cooling.

a Evolution of structural order \(\Theta\) in instantaneous (filled circles) and inherent states (open circles) in a 2D PM (\(\Delta\,=\,13 \%\)). Dotted data are shown for different cooling rates \(\gamma\). The onset temperature (\({T}_{{\rm{on}}}\,=\,0.00276\)) and dynamical glass transition temperature for the slowest cooling rate (\({T}_{g}\,=\,0.00135\)) are indicated, allowing us to separate the simple-liquid (light blue), supercooled (orange), and glass regimes (light green) in a clear manner. For instantaneous states, the temperature dependence of \(\Theta\) can be fitted with a linear function in the supercooled regime \((\Theta -{\Theta }_{0})/{\Theta }_{0}\,=\,\kappa (T-{T}_{0})/{T}_{0}\) (solid line), and changes the behaviour at lower (dash-dotted line) or higher temperatures (dashed line). The big open circles indicate equilibrium data from independent simulations. For inherent states, \(\Theta\) stays constant in both simple-liquid and glass regimes (horizontal lines). Note that smaller \(\Theta\) means higher order. See Table 1 for the fitting parameters and Supplementary Table 1 for the other systems. b, c Static structure factor \(S(k)\) for different temperatures at \(\gamma\,=\,1{0}^{-10}\) (panel b) and different cooling rates at \(T\,=\,0.0015\) (panel c). The same colouring scheme in the background is also applied in Fig. 2, for the ease of visualising different temperature regimes.