Related papers: Avalanches mediate crystallization in a hard-spher…
We develop a mesoscopic model to study the plastic behavior of an amorphous material under cyclic loading. The model is depinning-like and driven by a disordered thresholds dynamics which are coupled by long-range elastic interactions. We…
We have investigated by rotating drum experiments the influence of a small amount of fine particles on the stability of a granular heap. The fine particles are shown to have a strong and ambivalent influence. For low fine particle content,…
Understanding glass formation is a challenge because the existence of a true glass state, distinct from liquid and solid, remains elusive: Glasses are liquids that have become too viscous to flow. An old idea, as yet unproven…
Crystalline materials deform in an intermittent way via dislocation-slip avalanches. Below a critical stress, the dislocations are jammed within their glide plane due to long-range elastic interactions and the material exhibits plastic…
We study the coarsening dynamics of a two dimensional system via lattice Boltzmann numerical simulations. The system under consideration is a biphasic system consisting of domains of a dispersed phase closely packed together in a continuous…
For a large class of fluids exhibiting ultrasoft bounded pair potentials, particles form crystals consisting of clusters located in the lattice sites, with a density-independent lattice constant. Here we present an investigation on the…
The static friction between crystalline surfaces separated by a molecularly thin layer of adsorbed molecules is calculated using molecular dynamics simulations. These molecules naturally lead to a finite static friction that is consistent…
Glass forming liquids exhibit a rich phenomenology upon confinement. This is often related to the effects arising from wall-fluid interactions. Here we focus on the interesting limit where the separation of the confining walls becomes of…
Theoretical challenges in understanding the nature of glass and the glass transition remain significant open questions in statistical and condensed matter physics. As a prototypical example of complex physical systems, glasses and the…
Unlike atoms, colloidal particles are not identical, but can only be synthesised within a finite size tolerance. Colloids are therefore polydisperse, i.e. mixtures of infinitely many components with sizes drawn from a continuous…
Athermal disordered systems can exhibit a remarkable response to an applied oscillatory shear: after a relatively few shearing cycles, the system falls into a configuration that had already been visited in a previous cycle. After this point…
The dynamical glass transition is typically taken to be the temperature at which a glassy liquid is no longer able to equilibrate on experimental timescales. Consequently, the physical properties of these systems just above or below the…
We propose that there exists a generic class of glass forming systems that have competing states (of crystalline order or not) which are locally close in energy to the ground state (which is typically unique). Upon cooling, such systems…
The effect of ring stiffness and pressure on the glassy dynamics of a thermal assembly of two-dimensional ring polymers is investigated using extensive coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. In all cases, dynamical slowing down is…
Every solid particle in the atmosphere, from ice crystals and pollen to dust, ash, and microplastics, is non-spherical. These particles play significant roles in Earth's climate system, influencing temperature, weather patterns, natural…
The dynamics of dense finite-size particles in vertical channel flows of Newtonian and viscoelastic carrier fluids are examined using particle resolved simulations. Comparison to neutrally buoyant particles in the same configuration…
There are two modes by which clusters of aggregating particles can coalesce: The clusters can merge either (i) by the Ostwald ripening process in which particles diffuse from one cluster to the other whilst the cluster centres remain…
Crystal nucleation and growth processes induced by an externally applied shear strain in a model metallic glass are studied by means of nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, in a range of temperatures. We observe that the…
An avalanche or cascade occurs when one event causes one or more subsequent events, which in turn may cause further events in a chain reaction. Avalanching dynamics are studied in many disciplines, with a recent focus on average avalanche…
Ultrasoft colloids typically do not spontaneously crystallize, but rather vitrify, at high concentrations. Combining in-situ rheo-SANS experiments and numerical simulations we show that shear facilitates crystallization of colloidal star…