English

Laser induced reentrant freezing in two-dimensional attractive colloidal systems

Soft Condensed Matter 2010-05-07 v1

Abstract

The effects of an externally applied one-dimensional periodic potential on the freezing/melting behaviour of two-dimensional systems of colloidal particles with a short-range attractive interaction are studied using Monte Carlo simulations. In such systems, incommensuration results when the periodicity of the external potential does not match the length-scale at which the minimum of the attractive potential occurs. To study the effects of this incommensuration, we consider two different models for the system. Our simulations for both these models show the phenomenon of reentrant freezing as the strength of the periodic potential is varied. Our simulations also show that different exotic phases can form when the strength of the periodic potential is high, depending on the length-scale at which the minimum of the attractive pair-potential occurs.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0509279,
  title  = {Laser induced reentrant freezing in two-dimensional attractive colloidal systems},
  author = {Pinaki Chaudhuri and Chinmay Das and Chandan Dasgupta and H. R. Krishnamurthy and A. K. Sood},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0509279},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

24 pages (including figures) in preprint format