Dynamic facilitation explains democratic particle motion of metabasin transitions

Transitions between metabasins in supercooled liquids seem to occur through rapid “democratic” collective particle rearrangements. Here we show that this apparent homogeneous particle motion is a direct consequence of dynamic facilitation. We do so by studying metabasin transitions in facilitated spin models and constrained lattice gases. We find that metabasin transitions occur through a sequence of locally facilitated events taking place over a relatively short time frame. When observed on small enough spatial windows these events appear sudden and homogeneous. Our results indicate that metabasin transitions are essentially “non-democratic” in origin and yet another manifestation of dynamical heterogeneity in glass formers.