  We study the effect of periodic, spatially uniform temperature variation on
mechanical properties and structural relaxation of amorphous alloys using
molecular dynamics simulations. The disordered material is modeled via a
non-additive binary mixture, which is annealed from the liquid to the glassy
state with various cooling rates and then either aged at constant temperature
or subjected to thermal treatment. We found that in comparison to aged samples,
thermal cycling with respect to a reference temperature of approximately half
the glass transition temperature leads to more relaxed states with lower levels
of potential energy. The largest energy decrease was observed for rapidly
quenched glasses cycled with the thermal amplitude slightly smaller than the
reference temperature. Following the thermal treatment, the mechanical
properties were probed via uniaxial tensile strain at the reference temperature
and constant pressure. The numerical results indicate an inverse correlation
between the levels of potential energy and values of the elastic modulus and
yield stress as a function of the thermal amplitude.
