Related papers: Order-to-disorder transition in ring-shaped colloi…
When colloidal particles are vertically confined to a gap of between 1.3-1.6 particle diameters, they pack into buckled crystals of particles in either "up" or "down" states. Neighboring particles tend to occupy opposite states, analogous…
We examine a two-dimensional system of sterically repulsive interacting disks where each particle runs in a random direction. This system is equivalent to a run-and-tumble dynamics system in the limit where the run time is infinite. At low…
Steady-state turbulence is generated in a tank of water and the trajectories of particles forming a compressible system on the surface are tracked in time. The initial uniformly distributed floating particles coagulate and form a fractal…
A deposited drop of bovine serum albumin salt solution experiences both gelation and fracturation during evaporation. The cracks appearing at the edge of the gelling drop are regularly spaced, due to the competition between the…
We study a disordered network of bistable bonds subjected to periodic strain. The model is inspired by experiments on crumpled sheets and it features behaviors associated with glasses, including a complex energy landscape, memories, and…
We study melting in a two-dimensional system of classical particles with Gaussian-core interactions in disordered environments. The pure system validates the conventional two-step melting with a hexatic phase intervening between the solid…
Patterns are quotidian in nature. Distinct multiscale patterns are generally a consequence of nonequilibrium dynamical processes associated with mechanical or hydrodynamic instabilities. In this thesis, I report experimental investigations…
We simulate a two-dimensional array of droplets being compressed between two walls. The droplets are adhesive due to an attractive depletion force. As one wall moves toward the other, the droplet array is compressed and eventually induced…
Structural defects are ubiquitous in condensed matter, and not always a nuisance. For example, they underlie phenomena such as Anderson localization and hyperuniformity, and they are now being exploited to engineer novel materials. Here, we…
Dried droplets of polymer solutions of different molecular weights and concentrations leave various types of 'coffee-ring' patterns. These patterns are consequence of contact line motion. We have observed for very low molecular weight the…
Pattern formation inside a liquid phase is a phenomenon involved in many different aspects of life on our planet. The droplet form of a liquid that evaporates can reveal patterns that depend on the chemistry of the droplet and the physical…
Many types of dissipative processes can be found in nature or be engineered, and their interplay with a system can give rise to interesting phases of matter. Here we study the interplay among interaction, tunneling, and disorder in the…
We report an experimental study on the transition between a disordered liquid-like state and a ordered solid-like one, in a collection of magnetically interacting macroscopic grains. A monolayer of magnetized particles is vibrated…
Recent studies in the collective behavior of active colloids have shown that a global polar order may emerge due to long-ranged chemo-repulsive interactions between them. Here, we report the role of pinning disorder in the flocking…
In the usual segregation scenario for stable inclined chute flows of bidisperse mixtures of fine and coarse spherical particles, coarse particles rise toward the free surface, forming a coarse-rich region atop the flowing pile. Beyond a…
Freezing of charged colloids on square or triangular two-dimensional periodic substrates has been recently shown to realize a rich variety of orientational orders. We propose a theoretical framework to analyze the corresponding structures.…
We observe signatures of disorder-induced order in 1D XY spin chains with an external, site-dependent uni-axial random field within the XY plane. We numerically investigate signatures of a quantum phase transition at T=0, in particular an…
Fluctuation-dominated phase ordering refers to a steady state in which the magnitude of long-range order varies strongly owing to fluctuations, and to the associated coarsening phenomena during the approach to steady state. Strong…
Randomly packing spheres of equal size into a container consistently results in a static configuration with a density of ~64%. The ubiquity of random close packing (RCP) rather than the optimal crystalline array at 74% begs the question of…
We investigate by means of computer simulations the effect of structural disorder on the statistics of cracking for a thin layer of material under uniform and isotropic drying. The layer is discretized into a triangular lattice of springs.…