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The analysis of Coulomb crystallization is extended from one-component to two-component plasmas. Critical parameters for the existence of Coulomb crystals are derived for both classical and quantum crystals. In the latter case, a critical…
Equilibrium relationships involving solids are based on bulk thermodynamic properties that concern ideal crystals of infinite size. However, real processes towards equilibrium imply development of finite molecular-scale entities. The…
Advanced phase-field techniques have been applied to address various aspects of polycrystalline solidification including different modes of crystal nucleation. The height of the nucleation barrier has been determined by solving the…
An isolated, initially cold and ellipsoidal cloud of self-gravitating particles represents a relatively simple system to study the effects of the deviations from spherical symmetry in the mechanism of violent relaxation. Initial deviations…
We study the low-temperature behavior of a simple cluster-crystal forming system through simulation. The phase behavior is found to be hybrid between the Gaussian core and penetrable sphere models. The system additionally exhibits a series…
The search for spontaneous pattern formation in equilibrium phases with genuine quantum properties is a leading direction of current research. In this work we investigate the effect of quantum fluctuations - zero point motion and exchange…
We investigate the formation of cluster crystals with multiply occupied lattice sites on a spherical surface in systems of ultra-soft particles interacting via repulsive, bounded pair potentials. Not all interactions of this kind lead to…
At low temperatures ultrasoft particle systems develop interesting phases via the self-assembly of particle clusters. In this study we develop a general zero-temperature analysis fully characterizing the ground state of such models in two…
By molecular-dynamics simulations, we have studied the devitrification (or crystallization) of aged hard-sphere glasses. First, we find that the dynamics of the particles are intermittent: Quiescent periods, when the particles simply…
Vibrated monolayers of granular particles confined into horizontal cavities form a variety of fluid patterns with orientational order that resemble equilibrium liquid-crystal phases. In some cases one can identify nematic and smectic…
We study the static properties of cubic blue phases by numerically minimising the three-dimensional, Landau-de Gennes free energy for a cholesteric liquid crystal close to the isotropic-cholesteric phase transition. Thus we are able to…
We study the phase behaviour of a binary mixture of colloidal hard spheres and freely-jointed chains of beads using Monte Carlo simulations. Recently Panagiotopoulos and coworkers predicted [Nat. Commun. 5, 4472 (2014)] that the hexagonal…
We use coherent states as trial states for a variational approach to study a system of a finite number of three-level atoms interacting in a dipolar approximation with a one-mode electromagnetic field. The atoms are treated as…
The fluid - crystal equilibria of polydisperse mixtures of hard spheres have been studied by computer simulation of the solid phase and using an accurate equation of state for the fluid. A new scheme has been developed to evaluate the…
The control of discrete quantum states in solids and their use for quantum information processing is complicated by the lack of a detailed understanding of the mechanisms responsible for qubit decoherences. For spin qubits in semiconductor…
Particle systems interacting with a soft repulsion, at thermal equilibrium and under some circumstances, are known to form cluster crystals, i.e. periodic arrangements of particle aggregates. We study here how these states are modified by…
We simulate a strongly size-disperse hard-sphere fluid confined between two parallel, hard walls. We find that confinement induces crystallization into n-layered hexagonal lattices and a novel honeycomb-shaped structure, facilitated by…
The chaotic phase of the tilted Bose-Hubbard model is identified as a function of energy, tilt strength and particle interaction, from the eigenstate structure and the statistical features of the energy spectrum. Our analysis reveals that…
Phase transitions ruled by nucleation and growth can occur by nonrandom arrangement of nuclei. This is verified, for instance, in thin film growth at solid surfaces by vapor condensation or by electrodeposition where, around each nucleus, a…
The pressure-temperature phase diagram of a one-component system, with particles interacting through a spherically symmetric pair potential in two dimensions is studied. The interaction consists of a hard core plus an additional repulsion…