  Glass films prepared by a process of physical vapor deposition have been
shown to have thermodynamic and kinetic stability comparable to those of
ordinary glasses aged for thousands of years. A central question in the study
of vapor-deposited glasses, particularly in light of new knowledge regarding
anisotropy in these materials, is whether the ultra-stable glassy films formed
by vapor deposition are ever equivalent to those obtained by liquid cooling. We
present a computational study of vapor deposition for a two-dimensional glass
forming liquid using a methodology which closely mimics experiment. We find
that for the model considered here, structures that arise in vapor-deposited
materials are statistically identical to those observed in ordinary glasses,
provided the two are compared at the same inherent structure energy. We also
find that newly deposited hot molecules produce cascades of hot particles that
propagate far into the film, possibly influencing the relaxation of the
material.
