Related papers: Theory of amorphous ices
When we lower the temperature of a liquid, at some point we meet a first order phase transition to the crystal. Yet, under certain conditions it is possible to keep the system in its metastable phase and to avoid crystallization. In this…
Phases with distinct thermodynamic properties must differ in their underlying distributions of microscopic structures. While ordered phases are readily distinguished by unit cells and space groups, the local structural basis differentiating…
The nature of polyamorphism and amorphous-to-amorphous transition is investigated by means of an exactly solvable model with quenched disorder, the spherical s+p multi-spin interaction model. The analysis is carried out in the framework of…
Amorphous solids exhibit intrinsic, local structural transitions, that give rise to the well known quantum-mechanical two-level systems at low temperatures. We explain the microscopic origin of the electric dipole moment of these two-level…
The dynamics of glass formation in monatomic and binary liquids are studied numerically using a microscopic field theory for the evolution of the time-averaged atomic number density. A stochastic framework combining phase field crystal free…
We provide a theoretical perspective on the glass transition in molecular liquids at thermal equilibrium, on the spatially heterogeneous and aging dynamics of disordered materials, and on the rheology of soft glassy materials. We start with…
This perspective article reviews arguments that glass-forming liquids are different from those of standard liquid-state theory, which typically have a viscosity in the mPa$\cdot$s range and relaxation times of order picoseconds. These…
The transition of a fluid to a rigid glass upon cooling is a common route of transformation from liquid to solid that embodies the most poorly understood features of both phases1,2,3. From the liquid perspective, the puzzle is to understand…
Water's phase diagram displays enormous complexity with currently 17 experimentally-confirmed polymorphs of ice and several more predicted computationally. For almost 120 years, it has been a stomping ground for scientific discovery and ice…
The persistent problem posed by the glass transition is to develop a general atomic level description of a solidification process that is not associated with any change in the symmetry of the atomic structure. The answer proposed in this…
Glass-to-glass and liquid-to-liquid phase transitions were observed many years ago in bulk and confined water with or without applied pressure. It is shown that they result from the competition of two-liquid phases separated by an enthalpy…
Due to nonuniform aggregation in liquid state, from the thermodynamic point of view any glass-forming liquid in the vicinity of the liquid-to-solid phase transition temperature, irrespective of its actual chemical composition, shall be…
We study a two-dimensional fluid of particles interacting through a spherically-symmetric and marginally soft two-body repulsion. This model can exist in three different crystal phases, one of them with square symmetry and the other two…
We study the phase diagram of a system of spherical particles interacting in three dimensions through a potential consisting of a strict hard core plus a linear repulsive shoulder at larger distances. The phase diagram (obtained…
"Fluid polyamorphism" is the existence of different condensed amorphous states in a single-component fluid. It is either found or predicted, usually at extreme conditions, for a broad group of very different substances, including helium,…
We use computer simulations to study the microscopic dynamics of an athermal assembly of soft particles near the fluid-to-solid, jamming transition. Borrowing tools developed to study dynamic heterogeneity near glass transitions, we…
In this paper we present a new thermodynamically consistent phase transition model describing the evolution of a liquid substance, e.g., water, in a rigid container $\Omega$ when we freeze the container. Since the density $\varrho_{2}$ of…
Space-filling assemblies of athermal hydrophobic particles floating at an air-water interface, called particle rafts, are shown to undergo an unusual phase transition between two i.e., a low density `less-rigid and a high density…
Water exhibits rich polymorphism, where more than 20 crystalline phases have been experimentally reported. Five of them are metastable and form at low temperatures by either heating amorphous ice or degassing clathrate hydrates. However,…
Colloidal model systems allow for a flexible tuning of particle sizes, particle spacings and mutual interactions at constant temperature. Colloidal suspensions typically crystallize as soon as the interactions get sufficiently strong and…