Related papers: The microscopic pathway to crystallization in supe…
Melt supercooling leads to glass formation. Liquid-to-liquid phase transitions are observed depending on thermal paths. Viscosity, density and surface tension thermal dependences measured at heating and subsequent cooling show hysteresis…
Over the past two decades, a large number of studies addressed the topic of crystal nucleation in suspensions of hard spheres. The shared result of all these efforts is that, at low super-saturations, experimentally observed nucleation…
The crystallization of a binary system is investigated in computer model which takes into account a temperature dependence of diffusion coefficient and a nonequilibrium partition of dissolved component of the alloy. The dependence of…
Crystallization and vitrification of tetrahedral liquids are important both from a fundamental and a technological point of view. Here, we study via extensive umbrella sampling Monte Carlo computer simulations the nucleation barriers for a…
During the processes of nucleation and growth of a precipitate cluster from a supersaturated solution, the diffusion flux between the cluster and the solution changes the solute concentration near the cluster-solution interface from its…
We report a dynamic light scattering study of the fluctuation modes in a thermotropic liquid crystalline mixture of monomer and dimer compounds that exhibits the twist-bend nematic ($\mathrm{N_{TB}}$) phase. The results reveal a spectrum of…
It is shown that the large density fluctuations appearing at the onset of the first order nuclear liquid-gas phase transition can play an important role in the supernovae evolution. Due to these fluctuations, the neutrino gas may be trapped…
We performed dynamic simulations of spheres with short-range attractive interactions for many values of interaction strength and range. Fast crystallization occurs in a localized region of this parameter space, but the character of…
Ferroelectric ordering in liquids is a fundamental question of physics. Here, we show that ferroelectric ordering of the molecules causes formation of recently reported splay nematic liquid-crystalline phase. As shown by dielectric…
Thermal fluctuations and disorder play an essential role in high-T$_c$ superconductors. After reviewing the mean-field phase diagram we describe significant modifications that result when the effects of finite temperature and disorder are…
The glass transition refers to the non-equilibrium process by which an equilibrium liquid is transformed to a non-equilibrium disordered solid, or vice versa. Associated response functions, such as heat capacities, are markedly different on…
One of the most interesting phenomena in the soft-matter realm consists in the spontaneous formation of super-molecular structures (microphases) in condition of thermodynamic equilibrium. A simple mechanism responsible for this…
Motivated by old experiments on colloidal suspensions, we report molecular dynamics simulations of assemblies of hard spheres, addressing crystallization and glass formation. The simulations cover wide ranges of polydispersity s (standard…
In this paper we have explored computationally the solidification process of large nickel clusters. This process has the characteristic features of the first order phase transition occurring in a finite system. The focus of our research is…
From flow without dissipation of energy to the formation of vortices when placed within a rotating container, the superfluid state of matter has proven to be a very interesting physical phenomenon. Here we present the key mechanisms behind…
In the present chapter, we discuss an approach for transition from discrete to continuum description of thermomechanical behavior of solids. The transition is carried out for several anharmonic systems: one-dimensional crystal,…
The spontaneous formation of droplets via dewetting of a thin fluid film from a solid substrate allows for materials nanostructuring, under appropriate experimental control. While thermal fluctuations are expected to play a role in this…
We use molecular-dynamics computer simulations to study the translational and reorientational dynamics of a glass-forming liquid of dumbbells. For sufficiently elongated molecules the standard strong steric hindrance scenario for the…
Order-disorder transitions take place in many physical systems, but observing them in detail in real materials is difficult. In two- or quasi-two-dimensional systems, the transition has been studied by computer simulations and…
Using an activation mechanism reproducing facilitation, a dynamic phase transition triggered by a few active molecules was recently found in a supercooled model liquid. Prompted by this finding we investigate the presence of a similar…