Related papers: Direct observation of 3D atomic packing in monatom…

We present a scheme of the high-precise three-dimensional (3D) localization by the measurement of the atomic-level population. The scheme is applied to a four-level tripod-type atom coupled by three strong standing waves and a probe running…

Structural heterogeneity of amorphous solids present difficult challenges that stymie the prediction of plastic events, which are intimately connected to their mechanical behavior. Based on a perturbation analysis of the potential energy…

Using a version of density-functional theory which combines Onsager approximation and fundamental-measure theory for spatially nonuniform phases, we have studied the phase diagram of freely rotating hard rectangles and hard discorectangles.…

Topological phases of matter are often understood and predicted with the help of crystal symmetries, although they don't rely on them to exist. In this chapter we review how topological phases have been recently shown to emerge in amorphous…

A significant amount of attention was dedicated in recent years to the phenomenon of jamming of athermal amorphous solids by increasing the volume fraction of the microscopic constituents. At a critical value of the volume fraction,…

Soft matter systems are common in nature and make up nearly all the essential components necessary for life, from cells to the organelles within those cells. The ability of these soft materials to deform is crucial for the proper…

Molecular dynamics simulations were performed for five monatomic metallic liquids and the atomic structural characteristics and dynamical properties were systematically investigated and compared for understanding the underlying structural…

Atoms at liquid metal surfaces are known to form layers parallel to the surface. We analyze the two-dimensional arrangement of atoms within such layers at the surface of liquid sodium, using ab initio molecular dynamics (MD) simulations…

Polymorphism is ubiquitous in crystalline solids. Amorphous solids, such as glassy water and silicon, may undergo amorphous-to-amorphous transitions (AATs). The nature of AATs remains ambiguous, due to diverse system-dependent behaviors and…

Polymorphic solids of the same chemical composition can have different atomic structures; in each polymorph atoms vibrate around a local potential energy minimum (LPEM). If transformations to other structures have sufficiently high enthalpy…

We report free-standing atomic crystals that are strictly 2D and can be viewed as individual atomic planes pulled out of bulk crystals or as unrolled single-wall nanotubes. By using micromechanical cleavage, we have prepared and studied a…

Modeling the atomic structure of amorphous materials has long been a critical challenge in materials science. Recent advances in monolayer amorphous materials enable direct observation of their atomic structures, paving the way for a better…

Electronic nematic order has been reported in a rich landscape of materials, encompassing not only a range of intertwined correlated and topological phenomena, but also different underlying lattice symmetries. Motivated by these findings,…

We propose a simple theoretical model which explains a formation of dipolar 2D and 3D colloidal structures in nematic liquid crystal. Colloidal particles are treated as effective hard spheres interacting via their elastic dipole, quadrupole…

A wide range of materials can exist in microscopically disordered solid forms, referred to as amorphous solids or glasses. Such materials -- oxide glasses and metallic glasses, to polymer glasses, and soft solids such as colloidal glasses,…

This article proposes a topological method that extracts hierarchical structures of various amorphous solids. The method is based on the persistence diagram (PD), a mathematical tool for capturing shapes of multiscale data. The input to the…

Liquid crystals are assemblies of rod-like molecules which self-organize to form mesophases, in-between ordinary liquids and anisotropic crystals. At each point, the molecules collectively orient themselves along a privileged direction,…

Advances in nanotechnology now allow the creation of artificial atoms - engineered structures whose electronic states closely mimic those of real atoms. Understanding how these artificial atoms interact and bond is key to designing new…

When a system undergoes a transition from a liquid to a solid phase, it passes through multiple intermediate structures before reaching the final state. However, our knowledge on the exact pathways of this process is limited, mainly due to…

It is established that liquid metals exhibit surface layering at the liquid-vapor interface, while dielectric simple systems, like those interacting through Lennard-Jones potentials, show a monotonic decay from the liquid density to that of…