Related papers: Non-monotonous crossover between capillary condens…
The spatial suppression of order parameter fluctuations in a critical media produces Critical Casimir forces acting on confining surfaces. This scenario is realized in a critical binary mixture near the demixing transition point that…
The behavior as a function of temperature of very thin films (10 to 200 nm) of pentylcyanobiphenyl (5CB) on silicon substrates is reported. In the vicinity of the nematic/isotropic transition we observe a coexistence of two regions of…
We study the interplay of superfluidity and glassy ordering of hard core bosons with random, frustrating interactions. This is motivated by bosonic systems such as amorphous supersolid, disordered superconductors with preformed pairs, and…
The mean-field optical phase transition in multimode equal-coupling photonic networks is studied by temporal evolution of the nonlinear equations of motion of the coupled modes. Analogies to statistical mechanics models of interacting…
Recently synthesized colloids and biological systems such as proteins, viruses and monoclonal antibodies are heterogeneously charged, i.e., different regions of their surfaces carry different amount of positive or negative charge. Because…
We have discovered unusual behavior of polymer coils in a binary solvent (nitroethane+isooctane) near the critical temperature of demixing. The exceptionally close refractive indices of the solvent components make the critical opalescence…
We study holographic superconductor model with two scalar fields coupled to one single Maxwell field in the AdS soliton background away from the probe limit. We disclose properties of phase transitions mostly from the holographic…
We consider the phase diagram of self-avoiding walks (SAW) on the simple cubic lattice subject to surface and bulk interactions, modeling an adsorbing surface and variable solvent quality for a polymer in dilute solution, respectively. We…
Phase behavior of diblock copolymer/homopolymer blends (AB/C) is investigated theoretically. The study focuses on a special case where all three binary pairs, A/B, B/C and C/A, are miscible. Despite the miscibility of the binary pairs, a…
The equilibrium properties of block copolymer micelles confined in polymer thin films are investigated using self-consistent field theory. The theory is based on a model system consisting of AB diblock copolymers and A homopolymers. Two…
We study the surface critical behavior of semi-infinite systems belonging to the bulk universality class of the Ising model. Special attention is paid to the local behavior of experimentally relevant quantities such as the order parameter…
To describe the full spectrum of surface fluctuations of the interface between phase-separated colloid-polymer mixtures from low scattering vector q (classical capillary wave theory) to high q (bulk-like fluctuations), one must take account…
To study the critical Casimir force between chemically structured boundaries immersed in a binary mixture at its demixing transition, we consider a strip of Ising spins subject to alternating fixed spin boundary conditions. The system…
Competing scenarios for quantum critical points (QCPs) of strongly interacting Fermi systems signaled by a divergent density of states at zero temperature are contrasted. The conventional scenario, which enlists critical fluctuations of a…
Understanding the phase behaviour of mixtures continues to pose challenges, even for systems that might be considered "simple". Here we consider a very simple mixture of two colloidal and one non-adsorbing polymer species which can be…
We propose an unconventional topological quantum phase transition connecting a higher-order topological insulator (HOTI) and a featureless Mott insulator sharing the same symmetry patterns. We construct an effective theory description of…
A self-interacting polymer can undergo an orientational ordering transition, depending on the magnitude of the nematic interaction. The effect of embedding such a polymer into a flexible surface on this transition is studied on the…
We show that condensate-induced transitions between two-dimensional topological phases provide a general framework to relate one-dimensional spin models at their critical points. We demonstrate this using two examples. First, we show that…
We investigate the thermodynamics and signatures of a polariton condensate over a range of densities, using a model of microcavity polaritons with internal structure. We determine a phase diagram for this system including fluctuation…
By means of a minimal physical model, we investigate the interplay of two phase transitions at play in chromatin organization: (1) liquid-liquid phase separation (LLPS) within the fluid solvating chromatin, resulting in the formation of…