English

Melting of a two-dimensional monodisperse cluster crystal to a cluster liquid

Soft Condensed Matter 2019-04-29 v2

Abstract

Monodisperse ensembles of particles that have cluster crystalline phases at low temperatures can model a number of physical systems, such as vortices in type-1.5 superconductors, colloidal suspensions and cold atoms. In this work we study a two-dimensional cluster-forming particle system interacting via an ultrasoft potential. We present a simple mean-field characterization of the cluster-crystal ground state, corroborating with Monte Carlo simulations for a wide range of densities. The efficiency of several Monte Carlo algorithms are compared and the challenges of thermal equilibrium sampling are identified. We demonstrate that the liquid to cluster-crystal phase transition is of first order and occurs in a single step, and the liquid phase is a cluster liquid.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.1812.01113,
  title  = {Melting of a two-dimensional monodisperse cluster crystal to a cluster liquid},
  author = {Wenlong Wang and Rogelio Díaz-Méndez and Mats Wallin and Jack Lidmar and Egor Babaev},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1812.01113},
  year   = {2019}
}

Comments

11 pages and 10 figures;