Related papers: Crystallization and topology-induced dynamical het…
The dynamical arrest of gels is the consequence of a well defined structural phase transition, leading to the formation of a spanning cluster of bonded particles. The dynamical glass transition, instead, is not accompanied by any clear…
Solids deform and fluids flow, but soft glassy materials, such as emulsions, foams, suspensions, and pastes, exhibit an intricate mix of solid and liquid-like behavior. While much progress has been made to understand their elastic (small…
We present molecular dynamics (MD) simulations results for dense fluids of ultrasoft, fully-penetrable particles. These are a binary mixture and a polydisperse system of particles interacting via the generalized exponential model, which is…
We report a molecular dynamics simulation of a supercooled simple monatomic glass-forming liquid. It is found that the onset of the supercooled regime results in formation of distinct domains of slow diffusion which are confined to the…
By using fluid-kinetic simulations of confined and concentrated emulsion droplets, we investigate the nature of space non-homogeneity in soft-glassy dynamics and provide quantitative measurements of the statistical features of plastic…
We investigate a gas of wet granular particles, covered by a thin liquid film. The dynamic evolution is governed by two-particle interactions, which are mainly due to interfacial forces in contrast to dry granular gases. When two wet grains…
We present a numerical simulation of a granular material using hydrodynamic equations. We show that, in the absence of external forces, such a system phase-separates into high density and low density regions. We show that this separation is…
We present a computational study of sliding between gold clusters and a highly oriented pyrolytic graphite substrate, a material system that exhibits ultra-low friction due to structural lubricity. By means of molecular dynamics, it is…
As approaching the glass transition, particle motion in liquids becomes highly heterogeneous and regions with virtually no mobility coexist with liquid-like domains. This complex dynamics is believed to be responsible for different…
Understanding how topological constraints affect the dynamics of polymers in solution is at the basis of any polymer theory and it is particularly needed for melts of rings. These polymers fold as crumpled and space-filling objects and,…
Recent theories predict that when a supercooled liquid approaches the glass transition, particle clusters with a special "amorphous order" nucleate within the liquid, which lead to static correlations dictating the dramatic slowdown of…
Using molecular dynamics simulation, we investigate the slow dynamics of a supercooled binary mixture of soft particles interacting with a generalized Hertzian potential. At low density, it displays typical slow dynamics near its glass…
We perform experiments with a granular system that consists of a collection of identical hollow spheres (ping-pong balls). Particles rest on a horizontal metallic grid and are confined within a circular region. Fluidization is achieved by…
We report new dynamical modes in confined soft granular flows, such as stochastic jetting and dripping, with no counterpart in continuum viscous fluids. The new modes emerge as a result of the propagation of the chaotic behaviour of…
Dynamical heterogeneities in a colloidal fluid close to gelation are studied by means of computer simulations. A clear distinction between some fast particles and the rest, slow ones, is observed, yielding a picture of the gel composed by…
We identify the pattern of microscopic dynamical relaxation for a two dimensional glass forming liquid. On short timescales, bursts of irreversible particle motion, called cage jumps, aggregate into clusters. On larger time scales, clusters…
A large number (~10,000) of uniform stainless steel balls comprising less than one layer coverage on a vertically shaken plate provides a rich system for the study of excited granular media. Viewed from above, the horizontal motion in the…
In a granular gas, inelastic collisions produce an instability in which the constituent particles cluster heterogeneously. These clusters then interact with each other, further decreasing their kinetic energy. We report experiments of the…
Two-dimensional (2D) particulate aggregates formed due to competing interactions exhibit a range of non-equilibrium steady state morphologies from finite-size compact crystalline structures to non-compact string-like conformations. We…
If quenched fast enough, a liquid is able to avoid crystallization and will remain in a metastable supercooled state down to the glass transition, with an important increase in viscosity upon further cooling. There are important differences…