Related papers: Mixed-order phase transition in a colloidal crysta…
Liquid electrolytes adsorbed at the surface of metallic electrodes display a multitude of structures that can largely differ from the parent bulk system, both in terms of composition and local organization. In particular, the existence of…
We study the 2D crystalline phases of paramagnetic colloidal particles with dipolar interactions and constrained on a periodic substrate. Combining theory, simulation, and experiments we demonstrate a new scenario of first-order phase…
Phase transformations can be difficult to characterize at the microscopic level due to the inability to directly observe individual atomic motions. Model colloidal systems, by contrast, permit the direct observation of individual particle…
We study a continuous quasi-two-dimensional order-disorder phase transition that occurs in a simple model of a material that is inhomogeneously strained due to the presence of dislocation lines. Performing Monte Carlo simulations of…
We present experimental evidence for a first-order freezing/melting phase transition in a nonequilibrium system -- an oscillated two-dimensional isobaric granular fluid. The steady-state transition occurs between a gas and a crystal and is…
A comprehensive theory of the quantum phase transition in clean, itinerant Heisenberg ferromagnets is presented. It is shown that the standard mean-field description of the transition is invalid in spatial dimensions $d\leq 3$ due to the…
We present the first example of a phase transition in a nonequilibrium steady-state that can be argued analytically to be first order. The system of interest is a two-species reaction-diffusion problem whose control parameter is the total…
We investigate the driven states of a two-dimensional crystal whose ground state can be tuned through a square-triangular transition. The depinning of such a system from a quenched random background potential occurs via a complex sequence…
Phase transition and critical properties of Ising-like spin-orbital interacting systems in 2-dimensional triangular lattice are investigated. We first show that the ground state of the system is a composite spin-orbital ferro-ordered phase.…
Freezing of charged colloids on square or triangular two-dimensional periodic substrates has been recently shown to realize a rich variety of orientational orders. We propose a theoretical framework to analyze the corresponding structures.…
When driven by nonequilibrium fluctuations, particle systems may display phase transitions and physical behaviour with no equilibrium counterpart. We study a two-dimensional particle model initially proposed to describe driven non-Brownian…
We consider an off-lattice liquid crystal pair potential in strictly two dimensions. The potential is purely repulsive and short-ranged. Nevertheless, by means of a single parameter in the potential, the system is shown to undergo a…
Almost all normal-incommensurate phase transitions observed experimentally are continuous. We show that there is not any theoretical reason for this general behaviour in perfect crystals. A normal-incommensurate phase transition that is not…
The succession of suggested mechanisms of solid-state phase transitions - Second-order, Lambda, Martensitic, Displacive, Topological, Order-Disorder, Soft-mode, Incommensurate, Scaling and Quantum - are analyzed and explained why they…
Heavy-ion collisions performed in the beam energy range accessible by the NICA collider facility are expected to produce systems of extreme net-baryon densities and can thus reach yet unexplored regions of the QCD phase diagram. Here, one…
The ground state of colloidal magnetic particles in a modulated channel are investigated as function of the tilt angle of an applied magnetic field. The particles are confined by a parabolic potential in the transversal direction while in…
We investigate - with Monte Carlo computer simulations - the phase behaviour of dimeric colloidal molecules on periodic substrates with square symmetry. The molecules are formed in a two-dimensional suspension of like charged colloids…
We discuss the phenomenology of phase transitions studied with two control variables. Such measurements have become routine with magnetic field and temperature being varied for 1st order magnetic transitions with an ease not conceivable…
Two-dimensional colloidal suspensions exposed to periodic external fields exhibit a variety of molecular crystalline phases. There two or more colloids assemble at lattice sites of potential minima to build new structural entities, referred…
Metastable phases may be spontaneously formed from other metastable phases through nucleation. Here we demonstrate the spontaneous formation of a metastable phase from an unstable equilibrium by spinodal decomposition, which leads to a…