Related papers: Phase-change switching in 2D via soft interactions
Amorphous solids exhibit intrinsic, local structural transitions, that give rise to the well known quantum-mechanical two-level systems at low temperatures. We explain the microscopic origin of the electric dipole moment of these two-level…
Quasicrystals have been observed in a variety of materials ranging from metal alloys to block copolymers. However, their structural and dynamical properties cannot be readily described in terms of conventional solid-state models of liquids…
Two roads are presently being followed in order to establish the existence of a liquid-gas phase transition in finite nuclear systems from nuclear reactions at high energy. The clean experiment of observing the thermodynamic properties of a…
We study a strongly interacting dense hard-sphere system confined between two parallel plates by event-driven molecular dynamics simulations to address the fundamental question of the nature of the 3D to 2D crossover. As the fluid becomes…
We investigate the melting behavior of two-dimensional colloidal crystals stabilized by a core-softened potential featuring two competing interaction length scales. Using molecular dynamics simulations, we analyze three polymorphic solid…
In a recent letter [Phys. Rev. Lett. {\bf 75}, 2360 (1996)] we briefly discussed the existence and nature of ferroelectric order in positionally disordered dipolar materials. Here we report further results and give a complete description of…
L\"uscher has suggested a method to determine phase shifts from the finite volume dependence of the two-particle energy spectrum. We apply this to two models in d=2: (a) the Ising model, (b) a system of two Ising fields with different mass…
The choice that a solid system "makes" when adopting a crystal structure (stable or metastable) is ultimately governed by the interactions between electrons forming chemical bonds. By analyzing 6 prototypical binary transition-metal…
The recently discovered three dimensional or bulk topological insulators are expected to exhibit exotic quantum phenomena. It is believed that a trivial insulator can be twisted into a topological state by modulating the spin-orbit…
We overview the concept of dynamical phase transitions in isolated quantum systems quenched out of equilibrium. We focus on non-equilibrium transitions characterized by an order parameter, which features qualitatively distinct temporal…
Our previous molecular dynamic simulation studies of simple two-dimensional (2D) systems \cite{matt_big} suggested that both geometrical defects (localized, large-amplitude deviations from hexagonal ordering) and topological defects…
We study the temperature dependence of the conductivity of the 2D electronic solid. In realistic samples, a domain structure forms in the solid and each domain randomly orients in the absence of the in-plane field. At higher temperature,…
We present a model for the metal-insulator transition in 2D, observed in the recent years. Our starting point consists of two ingredients only, which are ubiquitous in the experiments: Coulomb interactions and weak disorder spin-orbit…
The nature of the globule-coil transition of surface-confined polymers has been an issue of debate. Here this 2D collapse transition is studied through a partially directed lattice model. In the general case of polymers with positive…
Colloidal suspensions are simple model systems for the study of phase transitions. Video microscopy is capable of directly imaging the structure and dynamics of colloidal suspensions in different phases. Recent results related to…
Using recent insights obtained in heavy fermion physics on the thermodynamic singularity structure associated with quantum phase transitions, we present here an experimental strategy to establish if the zero-temperature transition in the…
We employ extensive NPT molecular dynamics simulations to explore the thermal transitions of two-dimensional colloidal crystals interacting via a core-softened potential with competing length scales. The system stabilizes three distinct…
Recent advances in nanostructure fabrication and optical control, suggest that it will soon be possible to prepare collections of interacting two-level systems (i.e. qubits) within an optical cavity. Here we show theoretically that such…
We consider cold polar molecules confined in a helical optical lattice similar to those used in holographic microfabrication. An external electric field polarizes molecules along the axis of the helix. The large-distance inter-molecular…
Intermolecular forces are known to precipitate adhesion events between solid bodies. Inspired by a macro-scale experiment showing the hysteretic adhesion of a piece of flexible tape over a plastic substrate, we develop here a model of…