Related papers: The microscopic pathway to crystallization in supe…
We explore spatial symmetry breaking of a dipolar Bose Einstein condensate in the thermodynamic limit and reveal a critical point in the phase diagram at which crystallization occurs via a second order phase transition. This behavior is…
Crystallization and vitrification are two different routes to form a solid. Normally these two processes suppress each other, with the glass transition preventing crystallization at high density (or low temperature). This is even true for…
The premelting of ice is well known, but little is known about how the premelted and solid surfaces convert to each other. In this work, the transition dynamics between two phases are revealed with large-scale molecular dynamics…
The striking anomalies in physical properties of supercooled water that were discovered in the 1960-70s, remain incompletely understood and so provide both a source of controversy amongst theoreticians, and a stimulus to experimentalists…
In this work, we study the nature of transitions between inherent structures of a two-dimensional model supercooled liquid. We demonstrate that these transitions occur predominately along a small number of directions on the energy…
The nucleation mechanisms during solution deposition of organic semiconductor thin films determine the grain morphology and may influence the crystalline packing in some cases. Here, in-situ optical spectromicroscopy in reflection mode is…
We simulate a strongly size-disperse hard-sphere fluid confined between two parallel, hard walls. We find that confinement induces crystallization into n-layered hexagonal lattices and a novel honeycomb-shaped structure, facilitated by…
The bond fluctuation model with a bond potential has been applied to investigation of the glass transition of linear chains and chains with a regular disposition of small branches. Cooling and subsequent heating curves are obtained for the…
There exists a variety of theories of the glass transition and many more numerical models. But because the models need built-in complexity to prevent crystallization, comparisons with theory can be difficult. We study the dynamics of a…
Using molecular simulations, we shed light on the mechanism underlying crystal nucleation in metal alloys and unravel the interplay between crystal nucleation and glass transition, as the conditions of crystallization lie close to this…
The phase-field model for the description of the solidification processes with the glass-crystal competition is suggested. The model combines the first-order phase transition model in the phase-field formalism and gauge-field theory of…
Dominating finite-range interactions in many-body systems can lead to intriguing self-ordered phases of matter. Well known examples are crystalline solids or Coulomb crystals in ion traps. In those systems, crystallization proceeds via a…
We use numerical simulation to examine the possibility of a reversible liquid-liquid transition in supercooled water and related systems. In particular, for two atomistic models of water, we have computed free energies as functions of…
The description of molecular motion by macroscopic hydrodynamics has a long and continuing history. The Stokes-Einstein relation between the diffusion coefficient of a solute and the solvent viscosity predicted using macroscopic continuum…
We study the evolution from a liquid to a crystal phase in two-dimensional curved space. At early times, while crystal seeds grow preferentially in regions of low curvature, the lattice frustration produced in regions with high curvature is…
We study here how phase transitions are induced in colloidal suspensions by a point-like heat source, an optically trapped metal oxide particle absorbing light. We find that thermophoresis increases the number density of colloids around the…
At the extreme densities reached in the core of neutron stars, it is possible that quark deconfined matter is produced. The formation of this new phase of strongly interacting matter is likely to occur via a first-order phase transition for…
The supercooled state of bulk water is largely hidden by unavoidable crystallization, which creates an experimentally inaccessible temperature regime - a 'no man's land'. We address this and circumvent the crystallization problem by…
Glasses are ubiquitous in daily life and technology. However the microscopic mechanisms generating this state of matter remain subject to debate: Glasses are considered either as merely hyper-viscous liquids or as resulting from a genuine…
Recent theories predict that when a supercooled liquid approaches the glass transition, particle clusters with a special "amorphous order" nucleate within the liquid, which lead to static correlations dictating the dramatic slowdown of…