Related papers: Theory of amorphous ices
Supersolidity -- a quantum-mechanical phenomenon characterized by the presence of both superfluidity and crystalline order -- was initially envisioned in the context of bulk solid helium, as a possible answer to the question of whether a…
The liquid-gas phase diagram for polydisperse dipolar hard-sphere fluid with polydispersity in the hard-sphere size and dipolar moment is calculated using extension of the recently proposed thermodynamic perturbation theory for central…
Supersolids are states of matter that spontaneously break two continuous symmetries: translational invariance due to the appearance of a crystal structure and phase invariance due to phase locking of single-particle wave functions,…
The effect of polydispersity on the freezing transition of hard spheres is examined within a moment description. At low polydispersities a single fluid-to-crystal transition is recovered. With increasing polydispersity we find a density…
We use computer simulations to investigate the static properties of a simple glass-forming fluid in which the positions of a finite fraction of the particles has been frozen in. By probing the equilibrium distribution of the overlap between…
Topological order characterizes a class of quantum and classical many-body liquid states that escape the conventional classification by spontaneous symmetry breaking. Many properties of the topological-ordered states still await a clear…
The kinetics of dissolution of an amorphous solid is studied using a simple model of a glass that captures with reasonable accuracy the dynamic heterogeneities associated with the relaxation of an amorphous material at low temperatures. The…
Water shows intriguing thermodynamic and dynamic anomalies in the supercooled liquid state. One possible explanation of the origin of these anomalies lies in the existence of a metastable liquid-liquid phase transition (LLPT) between two…
Using computer simulations of an atomistic glass-forming liquid, we investigate the fluctuations of the overlap between a fluid configuration and a quenched reference system. We find that large fluctuations of the overlap develop as…
Phase separation is a fairly common physical phenomenon with examples including the formation of water droplets from humid air (fog, rain), the separation of a crystalline structure from an isotropic material such as a liquid or even the…
Existence and growth of amorphous order in supercooled liquids approaching glass transition is a subject of intense research. Even after decades of work, there is still no clear consensus on the molecular mechanisms that lead to a rapid…
The statistical mechanics of phase transitions in dense systems of polydisperse particles presents distinctive challenges to computer simulation and analytical theory alike. The core difficulty, namely dealing correctly with particle size…
Topological phases of matter are ubiquitous in crystals, but less is known about their existence in amorphous systems, that lack long-range order. In this perspective, we review the recent progress made on theoretically defining amorphous…
From the Ising model and the Lennard-Jones fluid, to water and the iron-carbon system, phase diagrams are an indispensable tool to understand phase equilibria. In spite of the effort of the simulation community the calculation of a large…
Amorphous solids are ubiquitous among natural and man-made materials. Often used as structural materials for their attractive mechanical properties, their utility depends critically on their response to applied stresses. Processes…
Twenty years ago Poole et al. (Nature 360, 324, 1992) suggested that the anomalous properties of supercooled water may be caused by a critical point that terminates a line of liquid-liquid separation of lower-density and higher-density…
We predict that ultracold bosonic dipolar gases, confined within a multilayer geometry, may undergo self-assembling processes, leading to the formation of chain gases and solids. These dipolar chains, with dipoles aligned across different…
The concept of a supersolid state is paradoxical. It combines the crystallization of a many-body system with dissipationless flow of the atoms it is built of. This quantum phase requires the breaking of two continuous symmetries, the phase…
Recent experiments and computer simulations show that supercooled liquids around the glass transition temperature are "dynamically heterogeneous" [1]. Such heterogeneity is expected from the random first order transition theory of the glass…
Amorphous solids, or glasses, are distinguished from crystalline solids by their lack of long-range structural order. At the level of two-body structural correlations, glassformers show no qualitative change upon vitrifying from a…