Related papers: Entropy-Driven Phase Transitions in Colloidal Syst…
We investigate the early part of the crystal nucleation process in the hard sphere fluid using data produced by computer simulation. We find that hexagonal order manifests continuously in the overcompressed liquid, beginning approximately…
We systematically study the relationship between equilibrium and non-equilibrium phase diagrams of a system of short-ranged attractive colloids. Using Monte Carlo and Brownian dynamics simulations we find a window of enhanced…
We investigate sedimentation of model hard sphere-like colloidal dispersions confined in horizontal capillaries using laser scanning confocal microscopy, dynamical density functional theory, and Brownian dynamics computer simulations. For…
Nucleation and growth is the dominant relaxation mechanism driving first order phase transitions. In two-dimensional at systems nucleation has been applied to a wide range of problems in physics, chemistry and biology. Here we study…
In this Ph.D. thesis quantum Monte Carlo methods are applied to investigate the properties of a number of ultracold quantum systems. In Chapter 1 we discuss the analytical approaches and approximations used in the subsequent Chapters; also…
We introduce and investigate a coarse-grained model for quasi one-dimensional ferrogels. In our description the magnetic particles are represented by hard spheres with a magnetic dipole moment in their centers. Harmonic springs connecting…
New insights into phase separation in colloidal suspensions are provided via a new dynamical theory based on the Polydisperse Lattice-Gas model. The model gives a simplified description of polydisperse colloids, incorporating a hard-core…
We investigate the response of a system of hard spheres to two classes of perturbations over a range of densities spanning the fluid, crystalline, and glassy regimes within a molecular dynamics framework. Firstly, we consider the relaxation…
The interplay between crystal nucleation and the structure of the metastable fluid has been a topic of significant debate over recent years. In particular, it has been suggested that even in simple model systems such as hard or charged…
We review recent progress in the theoretical description of anisotropic hard colloidal particles. The shapes considered range from rods and dumbbells to rounded cubes, polyhedra and to biaxial particles with arbitrary shape. Our focus is on…
Despite its fundamental and technological importance, a microscopic understanding of the crystallization process is still elusive. By computer simulations of the hard-sphere model we reveal the mechanism by which thermal fluctuations drive…
We explore the use of the nested sampling technique to sample the configuration space of non-spherical hard particles. We employ the technique on the hard dumbbell system consisting of two hard spheres connected by a rigid bond, and…
Predicting crystal nucleation is among the most significant long--standing challenges in condensed matter. In the system most studied (hard sphere colloids), the comparison between experiments performed using static light scattering and…
We study experimentally what is arguably the simplest yet non-trivial colloidal system: two-dimensional clusters of 6 spherical particles bound by depletion interactions. These clusters have multiple, degenerate ground states whose…
Using a phase field crystal model we study the structure and dynamics of a drop of colloidal suspension during evaporation of the solvent. We model an experimental system where contact line pinning of the drop on the substrate is…
We consider a theoretical model for a binary mixture of colloidal particles and spherical emulsion droplets. The hard sphere colloids interact via additional short-ranged attraction and long-ranged repulsion. The droplet-colloid interaction…
We study the phase behaviour of a two-dimensionally confined hard sphere colloidal system in the presence of a periodic light field of two interfering laser beams using Monte Carlo simulations. For a given packing fraction of the particles,…
We reconsider model II of [J. Chem. Phys. 1968, 49, 1778--1783], a two-dimensional lattice-gas system featuring a crystalline phase and two distinct fluid phases (liquid and vapor). In this system, a particle prevents other particles from…
We investigate a phase-field-crystal model for homogeneous nucleation. Instead of solving the time evolution of a density field towards equilibrium we use a String Method to identify saddle points in phase space. The saddle points allow to…
We consider a ternary mixture of hard colloidal spheres, ideal polymer spheres, and rigid vanishingly thin needles, which model stretched polymers or colloidal rods. For this model we develop a geometry-based density functional theory,…