Related papers: When do soft spheres become hard spheres?
The sol-gel transition is studied in two purely entropic models consisting of hard spheres in continuous three-dimensional space, with a fraction $p$ of nearest neighbor spheres tethered by inextensible bonds. When all the tethers are…
We conduct a numerical study of the dynamic behavior of a dense hard sphere fluid by deriving and integrating a set of Langevin equations. The statics of the system is described by a free energy functional of the Ramakrishnan-Yussouff form.…
Softer means stickier for solid adhesives, because material compliance facilitates close contact between non-conformal surfaces. Recent discoveries have revealed that soft materials can exhibit a rich array of new physics arising from…
An analytical model of non-Gaussian energy landscape of low-temperature fluids is developed based on the thermodynamics of the fluid of dipolar hard spheres. The entire excitation profile of the liquid, from the high temperatures to the…
We report surface shear rheological measurements on dense insoluble monolayers of micron sized colloidal spheres at the oil/water interface and of the protein $\beta$-lactoglobulin at the air/water surface. As expected, the elastic modulus…
We study the interplay between the fluid-crystal transition and the glass transition of elastic sphere system with polydispersity using nonequilibrium molecular dynamics simulations. It is found that the end point of the crystal-fluid…
We report the phase diagram of interpenetrating Hertzian spheres. The Hertz potential is purely repulsive, bounded at zero separation, and decreases monotonically as a power law with exponent 5/2, vanishing at the overlapping threshold.…
We investigate theoretically and numerically the impact of an elastic sphere on a rigid wall in a viscous fluid. Our focus is on the dynamics of the contact, employing the soft lubrication model in which the sphere is separated from the…
Using discrete molecular dynamics simulations we study the relation between the thermodynamic and diffusive behaviors of a primitive model of aqueous solutions of hydrophobic solutes consisting of hard spheres in the Jagla particles…
Super-cooled liquids are characterized by their fragility: the slowing down of the dynamics under cooling is more sudden and the jump of specific heat at the glass transition is generally larger in fragile liquids than in strong ones.…
Within the Replica Symmetry Breaking (RSB) framework developed by M.Mezard and G.Parisi we investigate the occurrence of structural glass transitions in a model of fluid characterized by hard sphere repulsion together with short range…
When a soft hydrogel sphere is placed on a rigid hydrophilic substrate, it undergoes arrested spreading by forming an axisymmetric foot near the contact line, while conserving its global spherical shape. In contrast, liquid water (that…
Molecular fluids show rich and complicated dynamics close to the glass transition. Some of these observations are related to the fact that translational and orientational degrees of freedom couple in nontrivial ways. A model system which…
The contact angle that a liquid drop makes on a soft substrate does not obey the classical Young's relation, since the solid is deformed elastically by the action of the capillary forces. The finite elasticity of the solid also renders the…
We combine the hyper-netted chain approximation of liquid state theory with the mode-coupling theory of the glass transition to analyze the structure and dynamics of soft spheres interacting via harmonic repulsion. We determine the locus of…
We study theoretically and numerically the elastic properties of hard sphere glasses, and provide a real-space description of their mechanical stability. In contrast to repulsive particles at zero-temperature, we argue that the presence of…
Raindrops falling on window panes spread upon contact, whereas hail can cause dents or scratches on the same glass window upon contact. While the former phenomenon resembles classical wetting, the latter is dictated by contact and adhesion…
We study the equilibrium thermodynamics of quantum hard spheres in the infinite-dimensional limit, determining the boundary between liquid and glass phases in the temperature-density plane by means of the Franz-Parisi potential. We find…
We characterize a system of hard spheres with a simple collision rule that breaks time reversal symmetry, but conserves energy. The collisions lead to an a-chiral, isotropic, and homogeneous stationary state, whose properties are determined…
The fragility of a glassforming liquid characterizes how rapidly its relaxation dynamics slow down with cooling. The viscosity of strong liquids follows an Arrhenius law with a temperature-independent barrier height to rearrangements…