Related papers: From Crystals to Disordered Crystals: A Hidden Ord…
Mixed-order phase transitions display a discontinuity in the order parameter like first-order transitions yet feature critical behavior like second-order transitions. Such transitions have been predicted for a broad range of equilibrium and…
Photonic crystals are extremely sensitive to structural disorder even to the point of completely losing their functionalities. While on one side this can be detrimental for applications in traditional optical devices, on the other side, it…
Herein, fundamentals of topology and symmetry breaking are used to understand crystallization and geometrical frustration in topologically close-packed structures. This frames solidification from a new perspective that is unique from…
Disordered solids exhibit unusual properties of their vibrational states and thermal conductivities. Recent progresses have well established the concept of "elastic heterogeneity", i.e., disordered materials show spatially inhomogeneous…
Pretransitional phenomena at first-order phase transition in crystals diluted by 'neutral' impurities (analogue of nonmagnetic atoms in dilute magnets) are considered. It is shown that field dependence of order parameter becomes…
Disordered systems like liquids, gels, glasses, or granular materials are not only ubiquitous in daily life and in industrial applications but they are also crucial for the mechanical stability of cells or the transport of chemical and…
The phase behavior of helical packings of thermoresponsive microspheres inside glass capillaries is studied as a function of volume fraction. Stable packings with long-range orientational order appear to evolve abruptly to disordered states…
We review the theory of second--order (ferro--)elastic phase transitions, where the order parameter consists of a certain linear combination of strain tensor components, and the accompanying soft mode is an acoustic phonon. In…
We have discovered a new family of three-dimensional crystal sphere packings that are strictly jammed (i.e., mechanically stable) and yet possess an anomalously low density. This family constitutes an uncountably infinite number of crystal…
We use a hybrid Monte Carlo algorithm to simulate the shaking of spheres at different vibrational amplitudes, and find that spontaneous crystallisation occurs in specific dynamical regimes. Several crystallising transitions are typically…
Time crystals, a phase showing spontaneous breaking of time-translation symmetry, has been an intriguing subject for systems far away from equilibrium. Recent experiments found such a phase both in the presence and absence of localization,…
We demonstrate that the phase transition from columnar-hexagonal liquid crystal to hexagonal-crystalline solid falls into an unusual universality class, which in three-dimensional allows for both discontinuous transitions as well as…
The properties of crystals consisting of several components can be widely tuned. Often solid solutions are produced, where substitutional or interstitional disorder determines the crystal thermodynamic and mechanical properties. The…
Metal oxides such as VO$_2$ undergo structural transitions to low-symmetry phases characterized by intricate crystalline order, accompanied by rich electronic behavior. We derive a minimal ionic Hamiltonian based on symmetry and local…
Crystals form regular and robust structures that under extreme conditions can melt and recrystallize into different arrangements in a process that is called crystal metamorphism. While crystals exist due to the breaking of a continuous…
We study the disorder-to-order transition in a collection of polar self-propelled particles interacting through a distance dependent alignment interaction. Strength of the interaction, $a^{d}$ ($0<a<1$) decays with metric distance $d$…
We study the order-disorder transition of horizontally swirled dry and wet granular disks by means of computer simulations. Our systematic investigation of the local order formation as a function of amplitude and period of the external…
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…
Order and disorder constitute two fundamental and opposite themes in condensed matter physics and materials science. Crystals are considered the epitome of order, characterised by long-range translational order. The discovery of…
When the discrete time-translation symmetry of isolated, periodically driven systems is spontaneously broken, a new phase of matter can emerge. We review some recent developments on both the theoretical underpinnings and experimental…