Generalized Compressibility in a Glass Forming Liquid

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We introduce a new quantity to probe the glass transition. This quantity is a linear generalized compressibility which depends solely on the positions of the particles. We have performed a molecular dynamics simulation on a glass forming liquid consisting of a two component mixture of soft spheres in three dimensions. As the temperature is lowered, the generalized compressibility drops sharply at the glass transition. Our results are consistent with the kinetic view of the glass transition, but not with an underlying second order phase transition.