Related papers: Shaking-induced crystallization of dense sphere pa…

Time crystals are many-body systems whose ground state spontaneously breaks time-translation symmetry and thus exhibits long-range spatiotemporal order and robust periodic motion. Using hydrodynamics, we have recently shown how an…

We study by molecular dynamics the interplay between arrest and crystallization in hard spheres. For state points in the plane of volume fraction ($0.54 \leq phi \leq 0.63$) and polydispersity ($0 \leq s \leq 0.085$), we delineate states…

Elastic systems that are spatially heterogeneous in their mechanical response pose special challenges for molecular simulations. Standard methods for sampling thermal fluctuations of a system's size and shape proceed through a series of…

Disappearance of a stacking fault in the hard-sphere crystal under gravity, such as reported by Zhu et al. [Nature 387 (1997) 883], has successfully been demonstrated by Monte Carlo simulations. We previously found that a less ordered (or…

We introduce a phenomenological theory for a new class of soft active fluids, with the ability to synchronise. Our theoretical framework describes the macroscopic behaviour of a collection of interacting anisotropic elements with cyclic…

Particle sedimentation in the vicinity of a fixed horizontal vortex with time-dependent intensity can be chaotic, provided gravity is sufficient to displace the particle cloud while the vortex is off or weak. This "stretch, sediment and…

Fluctuation-dominated phase ordering refers to a steady state in which the magnitude of long-range order varies strongly owing to fluctuations, and to the associated coarsening phenomena during the approach to steady state. Strong…

Nucleation is an activated process in which the system has to overcome a free energy barrier in order for a first-order phase transition between the metastable and the stable phases to take place. In the liquid-to-solid transition the…

Although the concept of random close packing with an almost universal packing fraction of ~ 0.64 for hard spheres was introduced more than half a century ago, there are still ongoing debates. The main difficulty in searching the densest…

We study a two-dimensional model for interacting colloidal particles which displays spontaneous clustering. Within this model we investigate the competition between the pinning to a periodic corrugation potential, and a sideways constant…

Using fully minimized fundamental measure functionals, we investigate free energies, vacancy concentrations and density distributions for bcc, fcc and hcp hard-sphere crystals. Results are complemented by an approach due to Stillinger which…

Via mechanisms not accessible at equilibrium, self-propelled particles can form phases with positional order, such as crystals, and with orientational order, such as polar flocks. However, the interplay between these two types of order…

We present a systematic investigation of the distribution of normal forces at the boundaries of static packings of spheres. A new method for the efficient construction of large hexagonal-close-packed crystals is introduced and used to study…

The best-understood crystal ordering transition is that of two-dimensional freezing, which proceeds by the rapid eradication of lattice defects as the temperature is lowered below a critical threshold. But crystals that assemble on closed…

We consider a system of spherical particles interacting by means of a pair potential equal to a finite constant for interparticle distances smaller than the sphere diameter and zero outside. The model may be a prototype for the interaction…

Steady state dynamics of clustering, long range order, and inelastic collapse are experimentally observed in vertically shaken granular monolayers. At large vibration amplitudes, particle correlations show only short range order like…

We analyze the geometric structure and mechanical stability of a complete set of isostatic and hyperstatic sphere packings obtained via exact enumeration. The number of nonisomorphic isostatic packings grows exponentially with the number of…

Due to the lack of long-range order, it remains challenging to characterize the structure of disordered solids and understand the nature of the glass transition. Here we propose a new structural order parameter by taking into account…

In supercooled liquids, vitrification generally suppresses crystallization. Yet some glasses can still crystallize despite the arrest of diffusive motion. This ill-understood process may limit the stability of glasses, but its microscopic…

We study a crystal composed of active units governed by self-alignment and chirality. The first mechanism acts as an effective torque that aligns the particle orientation with its velocity, while the second drives individual particles along…