Related papers: Experimental observation of the marginal glass pha…
A novel form of amorphous matter characterized by marginal stability was recently discovered in the mean-field theory of structural glasses. Using this approach, we provide complete phase diagrams delimiting the location of the marginally…
Marginally stable solids have peculiar physical properties that were discovered and analyzed in the context of the jamming transition. We theoretically investigate the existence of marginal stability in a prototypical model for structural…
Concentrated colloidal suspensions are a well-tested model system which has a glass transition. Colloids are suspensions of small solid particles in a liquid, and exhibit glassy behavior when the particle concentration is high; the…
We study a colloidal suspension confined between two quasi-parallel walls as a model system for glass transitions in confined geometries. The suspension is a mixture of two particle sizes to prevent wall-induced crystallization. We use…
Glasses are structurally liquid-like, but mechanically solid-like. Most attempts to understand glasses start from liquid state theory. Here we take the opposite point of view, and use concepts from solid state physics. We determine the…
Motivated by the mean field prediction of a Gardner phase transition between a "normal glass" and a "marginally stable glass", we investigate the off-equilibrium dynamics of three-dimensional polydisperse hard spheres, used as a model for…
Although glass phases are found in various soft matter systems ubiquitously, we are still far from a complete understanding of them. The concept of marginal stability predicted by infinite-dimensional mean-field theories is drawing…
We present the technical details of an experimental method to realize a model system for 2D phase transitions and the glass transition. The system consists of several hundred thousand colloidal super-paramagnetic particles confined by…
The dynamics of a glass-forming material slow greatly near the glass transition, and molecular motion becomes inhibited. We use confocal microscopy to investigate the motion of colloidal particles near the colloidal glass transition. As the…
We investigate the dynamics of a glass forming 2D colloidal mixture and show the existence of collective motions of the particles. We introduce a mean square displacement MSD with respect to the nearest neighbors which shows remarkable…
We investigate the properties of the glass phase of a recently introduced spin glass model of soft spins subjected to an anharmonic quartic local potential, which serves as a model of low temperature molecular or soft glasses. We solve the…
Using fast confocal microscopy we image the three-dimensional dynamics of particles in a yielded hard-sphere colloidal glass under steady shear. The structural relaxation, observed in regions with uniform shear, is nearly isotropic but is…
As one increases the concentration of a colloidal suspension, the system exhibits a dramatic increase in viscosity. Structurally, the system resembles a liquid, yet motions within the suspension are slow enough that it can be considered…
We use confocal microscopy to directly visualize the dynamics of aging colloidal glasses. We prepare a colloidal suspension at high density, a simple model system which shares many properties with other glasses, and initiate experiments by…
The glass transition is the most enduring grand-challenge problem in contemporary condensed matter physics. Here, we review the contribution of colloid experiments to our understanding of this problem. First, we briefly outline the success…
The study of the properties of glass-forming liquids is difficult for many reasons. Analytic solutions of mean field models are usually available only for systems embedded in a space with an unphysically high number of spatial dimensions;…
We study concentrated binary colloidal suspensions, a model system which has a glass transition as the volume fraction $\phi$ of particles is increased. We use confocal microscopy to directly observe particle motion within dense samples…
We study bidisperse colloidal suspensions confined within glass microcapillary tubes to model the glass transition in confined cylindrical geometries. We use high speed three-dimensional confocal microscopy to observe particle motions for a…
Despite their technological relevance, a full microscopic understanding of glasses is still lacking. This applies even more to their surfaces whose properties largely differ from that of the bulk material. Here, we experimentally…
We use theory and simulations to investigate the existence of amorphous glassy states in ultrasoft colloids. We combine the hyper-netted chain approximation with mode-coupling theory to study the dynamic phase diagram of soft repulsive…