Related papers: Topological characterization of crystalline ice st…
The mobility of atoms, molecules and radicals in icy grain mantles regulate ice restructuring, desorption, and chemistry in astrophysical environments. Interstellar ices are dominated by H2O, and diffusion on external and internal (pore)…
A large number of water models exists for molecular simulations. They differ in the ability to reproduce specific features of real water instead of others, like the correct temperature for the density maximum or the diffusion coefficient.…
We numerically study structural properties of mechanically stable packings of hard spheres (HS), in a wide range of packing fractions $0.53 \le \phi \le 0.72$. Detailed structural information is obtained from the analysis of orientational…
We study the topology of smectic defects in two and three dimensions. We give a topological classification of smectic point defects and disclination lines in three dimensions. In addition we describe the combination rules for smectic point…
Smectic liquid crystals are charcterized by layers that have a preferred uniform spacing and vanishing curvature in their ground state. Dislocations in the smectics play an important role in phase nucleation, layer reorientation, and…
Step edges of topological crystalline insulators can be viewed as predecessors of higher-order topology, as they embody one-dimensional edge channels embedded in an effective three-dimensional electronic vacuum emanating from the…
In the denser and colder ($\leq$20 K) regions of the interstellar medium (ISM), near-infrared observations have revealed the presence of sub-micron sized dust grains covered by several layers of H\textsubscript{2}O-dominated ices and…
Like many others, silicate solids dissolve when placed in contact with water. In a given aqueous environment, the dissolution rate depends highly on the composition and the structure of the solid, and can span several orders of magnitude.…
Ice formation is ubiquitous in nature, with important consequences in a variety of environments, including biological cells, soil, aircraft, transportation infrastructure and atmospheric clouds. However, its intrinsic kinetics and…
Based on neutron wide-angle diffraction and small-angle neutron scattering experiments, we show that there is a correlation between the preparational conditions of amorphous ice structures, their microscopic structural properties, the…
Ionic liquid crystals (ILCs) are anisotropic mesogenic molecules which additionally carry charges. This combination gives rise to a complex interplay of the underlying (anisotropic) contributions to the pair interactions. It promises…
The authors investigate the ideal, nondriven multifluid equations of motion to identify consistent (i.e., truly stationary), mechanically static models for composition profiles within the thermosphere. These physically faithful functions…
We examine ice crystal growth from water vapor at temperatures near the melting point, when surface premelting creates a quasiliquid layer at the solid/vapor interface. Recent ice growth measurements as a function of vapor supersaturation…
Several thermodynamic properties of ice Ih, II, and III are studied by a quasi-harmonic approximation and compared to results of quantum path integral and classical simulations. This approximation allows to obtain thermodynamic information…
Although the richness of spatial symmetries has led to a rapidly expanding inventory of possible topological crystalline (TC) phases of electrons, physical realizations have been slow to materialize due to the practical difficulty to…
Confined samples of liquid crystals are characterized by a variety of topological defects and can be exposed to external constraints such as extreme confinements with nontrivial topology. Here we explore the intrinsic structure of smectic…
Evolution of the order parameter in condensed matter analogues of cosmological phase transitions is discussed. It is shown that the density of the frozen-out topological defects is set by the competition between the quench rate -- the rate…
The behavior of identical particles interacting through the harmonic-repulsive pair potential has been studied in 3D using molecular dynamics simulations at a number of different densities. We found that at many densities, as the…
The microscopic mechanisms controlling heterogeneous ice nucleation are complex and remain poorly understood. Although good ice nucleators are generally believed to match ice lattice and to bind water, counter examples are often identified.…
We employ classical molecular dynamics simulations to investigate the molecular-level structure of water during the isothermal compression of hexagonal ice (I$h$) and low-density amorphous (LDA) ice at low temperatures. In both cases, the…