Related papers: Partial clustering prevents global crystallization…
We study a dense colloidal suspension confined between two quasiparallel glass plates as a model system for a supercooled liquid in confined geometries. We directly observe the three-dimensional Brownian motion of the colloidal particles…
We study the 2D crystalline phases of paramagnetic colloidal particles with dipolar interactions and constrained on a periodic substrate. Combining theory, simulation, and experiments we demonstrate a new scenario of first-order phase…
It is well-known that the liquid properties in a strongly confined system can be very different from their ordinary behaviors in an extended system, due to the competition between the thermal energy and the interaction energy. Here we show…
The nuclear-matter liquid-gas phase transition induces instabilities against finite-size density fluctuations. This has implications for both heavy-ion-collision and compact-star physics. In this paper, we study the clusterization…
Recent studies aimed at investigating artificial analogs of bacterial colonies have shown that low-density suspensions of self-propelled particles confined in two dimensions can assemble into finite aggregates that merge and split, but have…
We investigate experimentally the collective behavior of a wet granular monolayer under vertical vibrations. The spherical particles are partially wet such that there are short-ranged attractive interactions between adjacent particles. As…
A binary mixture of super-paramagnetic colloidal particles is confined between glass plates such that the large particles become fixed and provide a two-dimensional disordered matrix for the still mobile small particles, which form a fluid.…
Despite their technological relevance, a full microscopic understanding of glasses is still lacking. This applies even more to their surfaces whose properties largely differ from that of the bulk material. Here, we experimentally…
A detailed study of the low-temperature magnetic state and the relaxation in the phase-separated colossal magnetoresistance Nd2/3Ca1/3MnO3 perovskite has been carried out. Clear experimental evidence of the cluster-glass magnetic behavior…
When strained beyond the linear regime, soft colloidal glasses yield to steady-state plastic flow in a way that is similar to the deformation of conventional amorphous solids. Due to the much larger size of the colloidal particles with…
We study a two-dimensional model for interacting colloidal particles which displays spontaneous clustering. Within this model we investigate the competition between the pinning to a periodic corrugation potential, and a sideways constant…
Clustering is one of the mayor collective phenomena observed in active matter. We study the overdamped motion of interacting active Brownian particles in two dimensions. An instability in the pair correlation function causes the onset of…
The binary hard-sphere mixture is one of the simplest representations of a many-body system with competing time and length scales. This model is relevant to fundamentally understand both the structural and dynamical properties of materials,…
Dynamical clustering represents a characteristic feature of active matter consisting of self-propelled agents that convert energy from the environment into mechanical motion. At the micron scale, typical of overdamped dynamics, particles…
We consider the effect of contact interaction in a prototypical quantum spin Hall system of pseudo-spin-1/2 particles. A strong effective magnetic field with opposite directions for the two spin states restricts two-dimensional particle…
Steady state dynamics of clustering, long range order, and inelastic collapse are experimentally observed in vertically shaken granular monolayers. At large vibration amplitudes, particle correlations show only short range order like…
The behavior of identical particles interacting through the harmonic-repulsive pair potential has been studied in 3D using molecular dynamics simulations at a number of different densities. We found that at many densities, as the…
Although glassy relaxation is typically associated with disorder, here we report on a new type of glassy dynamics relating to dislocations within 2-D crystals of colloidal dimers. Previous studies have demonstrated that dislocation motion…
The usefulness of glasses, and particularly of metallic glasses, in technological applications is often limited by their toughness, which is defined as the area under the stress vs. strain curve before plastic yielding. Recently toughness…
The dynamical arrest of gels is the consequence of a well defined structural phase transition, leading to the formation of a spanning cluster of bonded particles. The dynamical glass transition, instead, is not accompanied by any clear…