Related papers: A liquid-solid critical point in a simple monatomi…
Time crystals are classified as discrete or continuous depending on whether they spontaneously break discrete or continuous time translation symmetry. While discrete time crystals have been extensively studied in periodically driven systems…
The striking behavior of water has deserved it to be referred to as an "anomalous" liquid. The water anomalies are greatly amplified in metastable (supercooled/stretched) regions. This makes difficult a complete experimental description…
A revised phase diagram for water shows three distinct fluid phases. There is no continuity of liquid and gas and no critical point on Gibbs density surface. A liquid state, water, spans all temperatures. A thermodynamic rigidity function,…
We present a thermodynamically consistent theoretical framework for lyotropic liquid crystals (LCs) based on the GENERIC (General Equation for the Non-Equilibrium Reversible-Irreversible Coupling) formalism. This formalism ensures…
We experimentally study the crystallization of a monolayer of vibrated discs with a built-in polar asymmetry, a model system of active liquids, and contrast it with that of vibrated isotropic discs. Increasing the packing fraction $\phi$,…
It is well known that the increase of the spatial dimensionality enhances the fluid-fluid demixing of a binary mixture of hard hyperspheres, i.e. the demixing occurs for lower mixture size asymmetry as compared to the three-dimensional…
We present diffusion Monte Carlo (DMC) results on a new metastable, superfluid phase above the crystal ground state in two-dimensional 4He at densities > 0.065 1/A^2. The state is anisotropic with hexatic orbital order. This implies that…
We use molecular dynamics with an embedded atom potential to study the behavior of palladium nanoclusters near the melting point in the microcanonical ensemble. We see transitions from both fcc and decahedral ground state structures to…
The phase diagram of model anisotropic particles with four attractive patches in a tetrahedral arrangement has been computed at two different values for the range of the potential, with the aim of investigating the conditions under which a…
In a cluster crystal, each lattice site is occupied by multiple soft-core particles. As the number density is increased at zero temperature, a `cascade' of isostructural phase transitions can occur between states whose site occupancy…
A novel liquid-liquid phase transition has been proposed and investigated in a wide variety of pure substances recently, including water, silica and silicon. From computer simulations using the Stillinger-Weber classical empirical…
We explore spatial symmetry breaking of a dipolar Bose Einstein condensate in the thermodynamic limit and reveal a critical point in the phase diagram at which crystallization occurs via a second order phase transition. This behavior is…
In liquid-crystalline elastomers, the nematic order parameter and the induced strain vary smoothly across the isotropic-nematic transition, without the expected first-order discontinuity. To investigate this smooth variation, we measure the…
Universality and scaling are hallmarks of second-order phase transitions but are generally unexpected in first-order quantum phase transitions (FOQPTs). We present a microscopic theory showing that quantum criticality can emerge around the…
It is difficult to derive the solid--fluid transition from microscopic models. We introduce particle systems whose potentials do not decay with distance and calculate their partition function exactly using a method similar to that for…
Nuclei of ordered materials emerging from the isotropic state usually show a shape topologically equivalent to a sphere; the well-known examples are crystals and nematic liquid crystal droplets. In this work, we explore experimentally and…
Topological insulator phases of non-interacting particles have been generalized from periodic crystals to amorphous lattices, which raises the question whether topologically ordered quantum many-body phases may similarly exist in amorphous…
Liquid-liquid phase transition (LLPT) in supercooled water has been a long-standing controversial issue. We show simulation results of real stable first-order phase transitions between high and low density liquid (HDL and LDL)-like…
Polymorphism is ubiquitous in crystalline solids. Amorphous solids, such as glassy water and silicon, may undergo amorphous-to-amorphous transitions (AATs). The nature of AATs remains ambiguous, due to diverse system-dependent behaviors and…
Bootstrap, or $k$-core, percolation displays on the Bethe lattice a mixed first/second order phase transition with both a discontinuous order parameter and diverging critical fluctuations. I apply the recently introduced $M$-layer technique…