Related papers: Glassy dynamics and dynamical heterogeneity in col…
We study the formation of a colloidal gel by means of Molecular Dynamics simulations of a model for colloidal suspensions. A slowing down with gel-like features is observed at low temperatures and low volume fractions, due to the formation…
In a dense colloidal suspension at a volume fraction slightly lower than that of its glass transition, we follow the trajectories of an assembly of tracers over a large time window. We define a local activity, which quantifies the local…
We analyze data from confocal microscopy experiments of a colloidal suspension to validate predictions of rapid sporadic events responsible for structural relaxation in a glassy sample. The trajectories of several thousand colloidal…
Glasses are structurally liquid-like, but mechanically solid-like. Most attempts to understand glasses start from liquid state theory. Here we take the opposite point of view, and use concepts from solid state physics. We determine the…
We use confocal microscopy to directly visualize the dynamics of aging colloidal glasses. We prepare a colloidal suspension at high density, a simple model system which shares many properties with other glasses, and initiate experiments by…
The dynamics of dense particle packings near the jamming transition is characterized by correlated particle motion. The growth of dynamical heterogeneities, or strong spatial variations in the motion of the particles constituting the…
We study bidisperse colloidal suspensions confined within glass microcapillary tubes to model the glass transition in confined cylindrical geometries. We use high speed three-dimensional confocal microscopy to observe particle motions for a…
Dynamical heterogeneities in a colloidal fluid close to gelation are studied by means of computer simulations. A clear distinction between some fast particles and the rest, slow ones, is observed, yielding a picture of the gel composed by…
We study concentrated colloidal suspensions, a model system which has a glass transition. The non-equilibrium nature of the glassy state is most clearly highlighted by aging -- the dependence of the system's properties on the time elapsed…
Bacterial assemblies exhibit rich collective behaviors that control their biological functions, making them a relevant object of study from an active matter physics perspective. Dense bacterial suspensions self-organize into distinct…
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 explore the glassy dynamics of soft colloids using microgels and charged particles interacting by steric and screened Coulomb interactions, respectively. In the supercooled regime, the structural relaxation time $\tau_\alpha$ of both…
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…
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…
We study confined colloidal suspensions as a model system which approximates the behavior of confined small molecule glass-formers. Dense colloidal suspensions become glassier when confined between parallel glass plates. We use confocal…
Understanding glass formation is a challenge because the existence of a true glass state, distinct from liquid and solid, remains elusive: Glasses are liquids that have become too viscous to flow. An old idea, as yet unproven…
The glass transition is the most enduring grand-challenge problem in contemporary condensed matter physics. Here, we review the contribution of colloid experiments to our understanding of this problem. First, we briefly outline the success…
Transitions in structural heterogeneity of colloidal depletion gels formed through short-range attractive interactions are correlated with their dynamical arrest. The system is a density and refractive index matched suspension of 0.20…
Using molecular dynamics simulation, we investigate the slow dynamics of a supercooled binary mixture of soft particles interacting with a generalized Hertzian potential. At low density, it displays typical slow dynamics near its glass…
Using molecular dynamics simulations we study the slow dynamics of a hard sphere fluid confined in a disordered porous matrix. The presence of both discontinuous and continuous glass transitions as well as the complex interplay between…