Inherent structure entropy of supercooled liquids

We present a quantitative description of the thermodynamics in a supercoole d binary Lennard-Jones liquid via the evaluation of the degeneracy of the i nherent structures, i.e., of the number of potential energy basins in confi guration space. We find that the contribution of the inherent structures to the free energy of the liquid almost completely decouples from the vibrati onal contribution. An important by-product of the presented analysis is the determination of the Kauzmann temperature for the studied system.