Related papers: Bidisperse ring polymers: topological glass to sta…
The universal anomalous vibrational and thermal properties of amorphous solids are believed to be related to the local variations of the elasticity. Recently it has been shown that the vibrational properties are sensitive to the glass's…
We discuss the microscopic mechanisms by which low-temperature amorphous states, such as ultrastable glasses, transform into equilibrium fluids, after a sudden temperature increase. Experiments suggest that this process is similar to the…
We have connected the dynamic fragility, namely the rapidity of the relaxation time increase upon temperature reduction, to the excess entropy and heat capacity of a large number of glass-forming polymers. The connection was obtained in a…
We systematically explore the self-assembly of semi-flexible polymers in deformable spherical confinement across a wide regime of chain stiffness, contour lengths and packing fractions by means of coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
We introduce a minimal theory of glass formation based on the ideas of molecular crowding and resultant string-like cooperative rearrangement, and address the effects of free interfaces. In the bulk case, we obtain a scaling expression for…
Investigating thermodynamic properties of liquid-solid transitions of flexible homopolymers with elastic bonds by means of multicanonical Monte Carlo simulations, we find crystalline conformations that resemble ground-state structures of…
A simple model of a glass former fluid, consisting of a bidisperse mixture of penetrable spheres is studied. The model shows a transition from fragile to strong behavior as temperature is reduced. This transition is driven by the…
We investigate the dynamics of an ensemble of inelastic hard spheres confined between two horizontal plates separated a distance smaller than twice the diameter of the particles, in such a way that the system is quasi-two-dimensional. The…
The dynamics of a dense binary mixture of soft dumbbells, each subject to an active propulsion force and thermal fluctuations, shows a sudden arrest, first to a translational then to a rotational glass, as one reduces temperature $T$ or the…
We have studied the competition between helix formation and aggregation for a simple polymer model. We present simulation results for a system of two such polymers, examining the potential of mean force, the balance between inter and…
It is a salient experimental fact that a large fraction of candidate spin liquid materials freeze as the temperature is lowered. The question naturally arises whether such freezing is intrinsic to the spin liquid ("disorder-free…
We use a random pinning procedure to investigate stable glassy states associated with large deviations of the activity in a model glass-former. We pin particles both from active (equilibrium) configurations and from stable (inactive) glassy…
We investigate the binding transition of two flexible polymers grafted to a steric surface with closeby end points. While free polymers show a discontinuous transition, grafting to a steric flat surface leads to a continuous binding…
Unconcatenated, unknotted polymer rings in the melt are subject to strong interactions with neighboring chains due to the presence of topological constraints. We study this by computer simulation using the bond-fluctuation algorithm for…
The relaxation dynamics of glass-forming systems shows a multitude of features that are absent in normal liquids, such as non-exponential relaxation and a strong temperature-dependence of the relaxation time. Connecting these dynamic…
The binary hard-sphere mixture is one of the simplest representations of a many-body system with competing time and length scales. This model is relevant to fundamentally understand both the structural and dynamical properties of materials,…
We study experimentally a coiling instability of cylindrical multilamellar stacks of phospholipid membranes, induced by polymers with hydrophobic anchors grafted along their hydrophilic backbone. We interpret our experimental results in…
Conformations of a crowded neutral semiflexible polymer under confinement near an attractive wall are studied via coarse-grained simulations. We study the effects of the interplay of the length of the polymer, bending rigidity, and the…
Based upon kinetic Monte Carlo simulations of crystallization in a simple polymer model we present a new picture of the mechanism by which the thickness of lamellar polymer crystals is constrained to a value close to the minimum…
Mixtures of polymers of varying topologies and stiffnesses display complex emergent rheological properties that often cannot be predicted from their single-component counterparts. For example, entangled blends of ring and linear polymers…