Related papers: Three simple scenarios for high-dimensional sphere…
We present the first systematic algorithm to estimate the maximum packing density of spheres when the grain sizes are drawn from an arbitrary size distribution. With an Apollonian filling rule, we implement our technique for disks in 2d and…
Advancements in the synthesis of faceted nanoparticles and colloids have spurred interest in the phase behavior of polyhedral shapes. Regular tetrahedra have attracted particular attention because they prefer local symmetries that are…
Dense packings have served as useful models of the structure of liquid, glassy and crystal states of matter, granular media, heterogeneous materials, and biological systems. Probing the symmetries and other mathematical properties of the…
Packings of identical objects have fascinated both scientists and laymen alike for centuries, in particular the sphere packings and the packings of identical regular tetrahedra. Mathematicians have tried for centuries to determine the…
What particle shape will generate the highest packing fraction when randomly poured into a container? In order to explore and navigate the enormous search space efficiently, we pair molecular dynamics simulations with artificial evolution.…
The formulation of the mean-field, infinite-dimensional solution of hard sphere glasses is a significant milestone for theoretical physics. How relevant this description might be for understanding low-dimensional glass-forming liquids,…
If a collection of identical particles is poured into a container, different shapes will fill to different densities. But what is the shape that fills a container as close as possible to a pre-specified, desired density? We demonstrate a…
The structural properties of dense random packings of identical hard spheres (HS) are investigated. The bond order parameter method is used to obtain detailed information on the local structural properties of the system for different…
In this paper we study the hard sphere packing problem in the Hamming space by the cavity method. We show that both the replica symmetric and the replica symmetry breaking approximations give maximum rates of packing that are asymptotically…
We use dynamic light scattering and computer simulations to study equilibrium dynamics and dynamic heterogeneity in concentrated suspensions of colloidal hard spheres. Our study covers an unprecedented density range and spans seven decades…
We show that the position of the de Gennes minimum in scattering spectra, where the dynamics of liquids shows down, is given by a hard-sphere expression for a range of mono-atomic liquids that crystallize in a close packed structure. This…
Unlike atoms, colloidal particles are not identical, but can only be synthesised within a finite size tolerance. Colloids are therefore polydisperse, i.e. mixtures of infinitely many components with sizes drawn from a continuous…
In a recent publication we established an analogy between the free energy of a hard sphere system and the energy of an elastic network [1]. This result enables one to study the free energy landscape of hard spheres, in particular to define…
Monodisperse spherical colloidal particles confined within emulsion droplets can crystallize into icosahedral clusters. Experimentally it was observed that a few large colloidal particles added as defects preferentially migrate to the…
Usually, supercooled liquids and glasses are thermodynamically unstable against crystallization. Classical nucleation theory (CNT) has been used to describe the crystallization dynamics of supercooled liquids. However, recent studies on…
We report a molecular dynamics study of crystallization in highly asymmetric binary hard-sphere mixtures, in which the large spheres can form a crystal phase while the small ones remain disordered during the crystallization process of the…
A system of hard spheres exhibits physics that is controlled only by their density. This comes about because the interaction energy is either infinite or zero, so all allowed configurations have exactly the same energy. The low density…
The hard sphere model is known to show a liquid-solid phase transition, with the solid expected to be either face centered cubic or hexagonal close packed. The difference in free energy between the two structures is very small and various…
We prove a lower bound on the entropy of sphere packings of $\mathbb R^d$ of density $\Theta(d \cdot 2^{-d})$. The entropy measures how plentiful such packings are, and our result is significantly stronger than the trivial lower bound that…
Dense packing of particles has provided important models to study the structure of matter in various systems such as liquid, glassy and crystalline phase, etc. The simplest sphere packing models are able to represent and capture salient…