Related papers: The elixir phase of chain molecule
Packing problems have been a source of fascination for millenia and their study has produced a rich literature that spans numerous disciplines. Investigations of hard-particle packing models have provided basic insights into the structure…
Nuclear matter is considered to be inhomogeneous at subnuclear densities that are realized in supernova cores and neutron star crusts, and the structures of nuclear matter change from spheres to cylinders, slabs, cylindrical holes and…
Geometric phases, arising from cyclic evolutions in a curved parameter space, appear in a wealth of physical settings. Recently, and largely motivated by the need of an experimentally realistic definition for quantum computing applications,…
We discuss the relation between the emergence of new phases with broken symmetry within the framework of simple models of biopolymers. We start with a classic model for a chain molecule of spherical beads tethered together, with the steric…
We introduce a lattice model of glass transition in polymer globules. This model exhibits a novel scenario of ergodicity breaking in which the disjoint regions of phase space do not arise uniformly, but as small chambers whose number…
We rigorously analyze the quantum phase transition between a metallic and an insulating phase in (non solvable) interacting spin chains or one dimensional fermionic systems. In particular, we prove the persistence of Luttinger liquid…
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…
The phase diagram of a system of electrons hopping on a square lattice and interacting through long-range Coulomb forces is studied as a function of density and interaction strength. The presence of a lattice strongly enhances the stability…
Liquid crystals are the prototype of the so-called soft condensed matter. In simple terms they are "structured liquids" that historically have received a lot of interest because they help to generate new concepts and knowledge in Physics,…
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…
Using a phase field crystal model we study the structure and dynamics of a drop of colloidal suspension during evaporation of the solvent. We model an experimental system where contact line pinning of the drop on the substrate is…
Liquids under confinement differ in behavior from their bulk counterparts and can acquire properties that are specific to the confined phase and linked to the nature and structure of the host matrix. While confined liquid water is not a new…
Proteins are a matter of dual nature. As a physical object, a protein molecule is a folded chain of amino acids with multifarious biochemistry. But it is also an instantiation along an evolutionary trajectory determined by the function…
Jamming is a ubiquitous phenomenon that appears in many soft matter systems, including granular materials, foams, colloidal suspensions, emulsions, polymers, and cells -- when jamming occurs, the system undergoes a transition from flow-like…
Depinning and nonequilibrium transitions within sliding states in systems driven over quenched disorder arise across a wide spectrum of size scales ranging from atomic friction at the nanoscale, flux motion in type-II superconductors at the…
Neutron matter is an intriguing nuclear system with multiple connections to other areas of physics. Considerable progress has been made over the last two decades in exploring the properties of pure neutron fluids. Here we begin by reviewing…
The $L_\alpha$ phase of lipid bilayers is a fluid self-assembled state, key to the formulation of cosmetics, detergents and pharmaceutics. Despite having been extensively scrutinized in self-assembled phospholipid or surfactant bilayers,…
We present a study of the structure of phase diagrams for matter-radiation systems, based on the use of coherent states and the catastrophe formalism, that compares very well with the exact quantum solutions as well as providing analytical…
In recent years, a second fluid-fluid phase transition has been reported in several materials at pressures far above the usual liquid-gas phase transition. In this paper, we introduce a new model of this behavior based on the Lennard-Jones…
Geometric phases play an enormous role in optics and are generally associated with the evolution of light's polarization state on the Poincar\'{e} sphere, or its spin on the sphere of spin directions. Here we put forward a new kind of…