Mixturelike Behavior Near a Liquid-Liquid Phase Transition in Simulations of Supercooled Water

In simulations of a waterlike model (ST2) that exhibits a liquid-liquid phase transition, we test for the occurrence of a thermodynamic region in which the liquid can be modeled as a two-component mixture. We assign each molecule to one of two species based on the distance to its fifth-nearest neighbor, and evaluate the concentration of each species over a wide range of temperature and density. Our concentration data compare well with mixture-model predictions in a region between the liquid-liquid critical temperature and the temperature of maximum density. Fits of the model to the data in this region yield accurate estimates for the location of the critical point. We also show that the liquid outside the region of density anomalies is poorly modeled as a simple mixture.