Related papers: Can elemental bismuth be a liquid crystal?
A liquid can form under cooling a glassy state either as a result of a continuous slowing down or by a first order polyamorphous phase transition. The second scenario has so far always been observed below the melting point where it…
We show that order-parameter fluctuations in a good type-I superconductor or a liquid crystal always increase the size of the first-order transition. This behavior is eventually changed when the system crosses over to inverted-XY critical…
Topological changes of the Fermi surface under pressure may cause anomalies in the low-temperature elastic properties. Our density functional calculations for elemental Osmium evidence that this metal undergoes three such Lifshitz…
The reversible phase transition from hydrochloric-acid-doped ice VI to its hydrogen-ordered counterpart ice XV is followed using differential scanning calorimetry. Upon cooling at ambient pressure fast hydrogen ordering is observed at first…
First principles molecular dynamics simulations reveal a liquid-liquid phase transition in supercooled elemental silicon. Two phases coexist below $T_c\approx 1232K$. The low density phase is nearly tetra-coordinated, with a pseudogap at…
The first successful theory of superconductivity was the one proposed by Bardeen, Cooper and Schrieffer in 1957. This breakthrough fostered a remarkable growth of the field that propitiated progress and questionings, generating alternative…
Low-temperature states of polycrystalline samples of a frustrated pyrochlore oxide Tb$_{2+x}$Ti$_{2-x}$O$_{7+y}$ have been investigated by specific heat, magnetic susceptibility, and neutron scattering experiments. We have found that this…
A novel flow instability emerging during a rheometric flow of a phase change material sheared in the vicinity of the solid-fluid transition is reported. Right above the onset of the flow induced crystallisation, the presence of the crystals…
When immiscible liquids are subject to electric fields interfacial forces arise due to a difference in the permittivity or the conductance of the liquids, and these forces lead to shape change in droplets or to interfacial instabilities. In…
A "supersolid" -- a crystal that exhibits an off-diagonal long-range order and a superflow -- has been a subject of much research since its first proposal [Andreev and Lifshitz 1969], but has not been realized as a ground state of…
In condensed matter physics, there is a novel phase termed "quantum spin liquid", in which strong quantum fluctuations prevent the long-range magnetic order from being established, and so the electron spins do not form an ordered pattern…
Results of X-ray diffraction experiments on solid oxygen at low temperature and at pressures up to 10 GPa are presented.A careful sample preparation and annealing around 240 K allowed to obtain very good diffraction patterns in the…
Loubeyre, Occelli, and Dumas (LOD) [1] claim to have produced metallic hydrogen (MH) at a pressure of 425 GPa, without the necessary supporting evidence of an insulator to metal transition. The paper is much ado about nothing. Most of the…
Most materials freeze when cooled to sufficiently low temperature. We find that magnetic dipoles randomly distributed in a solid matrix condense into a spin liquid with spectral properties on cooling that are the diametric opposite of those…
All solid phases of bismuth under pressure, but one, have been experimentally found to superconduct. From Bi-I to Bi-V, avoiding Bi-IV, they become superconductors and perhaps Bi-IV may also become superconductive. To investigate the…
The recently discovered anisotropy of the longitudinal resistance of two-dimensional electrons near half filling of high Landau levels is found to persist to much higher temperatures T when a large in-plane magnetic field B|| is applied.…
We describe a first-order phase transition of a simple system in a process where the volume is kept constant. We show that, unlike what happens when the pressure is constant, (i) the transformation extends over a finite temperature (and…
It is shown that a condensation transition involving a chiral order parameter can occur in itinerant helimagnets, in analogy to the transition between the isotropic phase and the phase known as blue fog or blue phase III in cholesteric…
Whether the glass transition is caused by an underlying singularity or is a purely kinetic phenomenon is a significant outstanding question. Studying an atomistic glass former, we introduce a sampling method to access temperatures…
Water has many anomalous properties compared to "simple" liquids, and these anomalies are typically enhanced in supercooled water. While numerous models have been proposed, including the liquid-liquid critical point, the singularity-free…