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The statistical mechanics of N cold dark matter (CDM) particles interacting via a softened gravitational potential is reviewed in the microcanonical ensemble and mean-field limit. A phase diagram for the system is computed as a function of…
We discuss the optimization of optical microcavity designs based on 2D photonic crystals for the purpose of strong coupling between the cavity field and a single neutral atom trapped within a hole. We present numerical predictions for the…
The evolution of halos consisting of weakly self-interacting dark matter particles is investigated using a new numerical Monte-Carlo N-body method. The halos initially contain kinematically cold, dense 1/r-power-law cores. For interaction…
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…
Cavitation, the formation of vapor bubbles in metastable liquids, is highly sensitive to nanoscale surface defects. Using molecular dynamics simulations and classical nucleation theory, we show that pure water confined within defect-free…
Numerical simulations have revealed the presence of long-lived substructure in Cold Dark Matter (CDM) halos. These surviving cores of past merger and accretion events vastly outnumber the known satellites of the Milky Way. This finding has…
Micrometre sized colloidal particles can be viewed as large atoms with tailorable size, shape and interactions. These building blocks can assemble into extremely rich structures and phases, in which the thermal motions of particles can be…
Ionic microgel particles are intriguing systems in which the properties of thermo-responsive polymeric colloids are enriched by the presence of charged groups. In order to rationalize their properties and predict the behaviour of microgel…
The properties of substructure in galaxy clusters, exquisitely probed by gravitational lensing, offer a stringent test of dark matter (DM) models. Combining strong- and weak-lensing data for massive clusters, we map their total mass --…
We present a detailed numerical study of effective interactions between micron-sized silica spheres, induced by highly charged zirconia nanoparticles. It is demonstrated that the effective interactions are consistent with a recently…
Ultracold polar molecules can be shielded from fast collisional losses using microwaves, but achieving the required polarization purity is technically challenging. Here, we propose a scheme for shielding using microwaves with polarization…
We investigate the thermodynamics of Gauss-Bonnet black holes in asymptotically de Sitter spacetimes embedded in an isothermal cavity, via a Euclidean action approach. We consider both charged and uncharged black holes, working in the…
The cold dark matter (CDM) cosmological model has been remarkably successful in explaining cosmic structure over an enormous span of redshift, but it has faced persistent challenges from observations that probe the innermost regions of dark…
We consider the possibility that small black holes can act as nucleation seeds for the decay of a metastable vacuum, focussing particularly on the Higgs potential. Using a thin-wall bubble approximation for the nucleation process, which is…
We study the black hole interiors in holographic Weyl semimetals and holographic nodal line semimetals. We find that the black hole singularities are of Kasner form. In the topologically nontrivial phase at low temperature, both the Kasner…
Colloidal model systems allow studying crystallization kinetics under fairly ideal conditions with rather well characterized pair interactions and minimized external influences. In complementary approaches therefore experiment, analytic…
This talk reviews our recent work showing how tiny black holes can act as nucleation sites for the decay of the metastable Higgs vacuum. We start by discussing the formation of thin wall bubbles of true vacuum inside a false vacuum, and…
Recent data have radically altered the X-ray perspective on cooling flow clusters. X-ray spectra show that very little of the hot intracluster medium is cooler than about 1 keV, despite having short cooling times. In an increasing number of…
We study conformations assumed by single diblock star copolymers in a poor solvent by means of the Gaussian variational theory and Monte Carlo simulation in continuous space. Cases of stars with internal and external hydrophobic blocks are…
In supercooled liquids, vitrification generally suppresses crystallization. Yet some glasses can still crystallize despite the arrest of diffusive motion. This ill-understood process may limit the stability of glasses, but its microscopic…