Related papers: Depth-dependent ordering, two-length-scale phenome…
The melting transitions of a colloidal lattice confined to a two-dimensional ($2D$) periodic substrate of square symmetry are studied using Monte Carlo simulations. When the strengths of interparticle and particle-substrate interactions are…
During plastic deformation, metals change shape while continuously becoming stronger. The microscopic origin of these processes lies in the proliferation and movement of line defects, dislocations, and the subsequent self-organisation and…
Crystal defects play a large role in how materials respond to their surroundings, yet there are many uncertainties in how extended defects form, move, and interact deep beneath a material's surface. A newly developed imaging diagnostic,…
When driven by nonequilibrium fluctuations, particle systems may display phase transitions and physical behaviour with no equilibrium counterpart. We study a two-dimensional particle model initially proposed to describe driven non-Brownian…
Crystal plasticity occurs by deformation bursts due to the avalanche-like motion of dislocations. Here we perform extensive numerical simulations of a three-dimensional dislocation dynamics model under quasistatic stress-controlled loading.…
Single crystal X-ray diffraction measurements have been carried out on Cd_2Re_2O_7 near and below the phase transition it exhibits at Tc' ~195 K. Cd_2Re_2O_7 was recently discovered as the first, and to date only, superconductor with the…
We find that the upper critical field in a two-dimensional disordered superconductor can increase essentially at low temperatures. This happens due to the formation of local superconducting islands weakly coupled via the Josephson effect.…
First-order phase transitions occur through the nucleation of critical bubbles of the stable phase within the metastable phase. Using holography, we present a fully microscopic description of these bubbles in a strongly coupled,…
We study colloidal ordering and disordering on two-dimensional periodic substrates where the number of colloids per substrate minima is two or three. The colloids form dimer or trimer states with orientational ordering, referred to as…
Angular-dependent magnetic torque measurements performed near the critical temperature on single crystals of HgBa_{2}CuO_{4+y}, La_{2-x}Sr{x}CuO_{4}, and YBa_{2}Cu_{3}O_{6.93} are scaled, following the 3D XY model, in order to determine the…
Two-dimensional melting is one of the most fascinating and poorly understood phase transitions in nature. Theoretical investigations often point to a two-step melting scenario involving unbinding of topological defects at two distinct…
We study the behavior of the topological defects in the inherent structures of a two-dimensional binary Lennard-Jones system as the size dispersity varies. We find that topological defects arising from the particle size dispersity are…
We present a novel mechanism for the anomalous behaviour of the specific heat in low-temperature amorphous solids. The analytic solution of a mean-field model belonging to the same universality class as high-dimensional glasses, the…
We report on the results of molecular dynamics simulation (MD) studies of the classical two-dimensional electron crystal in the presence disorder. Our study is motivated by recent experiments on this system in modulation doped semiconductor…
The supermassive black holes found at the centers of galaxies are often surrounded by dense star clusters. The ages of these clusters are generally longer than the resonant-relaxation time and shorter than the two-body relaxation time over…
At low temperature T, a significant difference between the behavior of crystals on the one hand and disordered solids on the other is seen: sufficiently strong disorder can give rise to a transition of the transport properties from…
Ionic crystals, such as solid electrolytes and complex oxides, are central to modern technologies for energy storage, sensing, actuation, and other functional applications. An important fundamental issue in the atomic and quantum-scale…
Scaling relations are used to study cross-overs, due to anisotropic spin interactions or single ion anisotropy, and due to disorder, in the thermodynamics and correlation functions near quantum-critical transitions. The principal results…
A colloidal dispersion droplet evaporating from a surface, such as a drying coffee drop, leaves a distinct ring-shaped stain. Although this mechanism is frequently used for particle self-assembly, the conditions for crystallization have…
Studying the order of the chiral transition for $N_f=2$ is of fundamental importance to understand the mechanism of color confinement. We present results of a numerical investigation on the order of the transition by use of a novel strategy…