Related papers: Two-dimensional melting far from equilibrium in a …
We study an air-fluidized granular monolayer, composed of plastic spheres which roll on a metallic grid. The air current is adjusted so that the spheres never loose contact with the grid, so that the dynamics may be regarded as pseudo…
Spontaneous symmetry breaking provides a powerful window into the nature of underlying electronic orders. In strongly correlated systems, multiple symmetry-breaking orders can arise simultaneously. and their interplay generates an intricate…
We investigate the effects of the reversal of the gravitational field onto a sedimented and partially crystallised suspension of nearly-hard sphere colloids. We analyse the structural changes that take place during the melting of the…
We study dynamic self-organisation and order-disorder transitions in a two-dimensional system of self-propelled particles. Our model is a variation of the Vicsek model, where particles align the motion to their neighbours but repel each…
Computer simulations and scaling theory are used to investigate the damping of oscillations during epitaxial growth on high-symmetry surfaces. The crossover from smooth to rough growth takes place after the deposition of (D/F)^\delta…
Using scaled-particle theory for binary mixtures of two-dimensional hard particles with rotational freedom, we analyse the stability of nematic phases and the demixing phase behaviour of a variety of mixtures, focussing on cases where at…
Disordered systems like liquids, gels, glasses, or granular materials are not only ubiquitous in daily life and in industrial applications but they are also crucial for the mechanical stability of cells or the transport of chemical and…
We investigate the effect of a strong magnetic field on a three dimensional smectic A liquid crystal. We identify a critical field above which the uniform layered state loses stability; this is associated to the onset of layer undulations.…
We study experimentally the nonequilibrium phase behaviour of a horizontal monolayer of macroscopic rods. The motion of the rods in two dimensions is driven by vibrations in the vertical direction. Aside from the control variables of…
We report the structure of transient fluctuations in the liquid phase of a two-dimensional system that exhibits several ordered phases with different symmetries. The density-temperature phase diagram of the system studied, composed of…
A hexagonal columnar crystal undergoes a shear-melting transition above a critical shear rate or stress. We combine the analysis of the shear-thinning regime below the melting with that of synchrotron X-ray scattering data under shear and…
Long-wavelength Mermin-Wagner fluctuations prevent the existence of translational long-range order, in two-dimensional systems at finite temperature. Their dynamical signature, which is the divergence of the vibrational amplitude with the…
The time evolution and spatial correlations of nonaffine displacements in deformed amorphous solids are investigated using molecular dynamics simulations. The three-dimensional model glass is represented via the binary mixture, which is…
The critical phenomena associated to the liquid to solid transition of quasi-two-dimensional vibrated granular systems is studied using molecular dynamics simulations of the inelastic hard sphere model. The critical properties are…
Melting in 2D is described by the celebrated Kosterlitz-Thouless-Halperin-Nelson-Young (KTHNY) theory. The unbinding of two different types of topological defects destroys translational and orientational order at different temperatures. The…
Lateral microsegregation in a monolayer of a binary mixture of particles or macromolecules is studied by MD simulations in a generic model with the interacting potentials inspired by effective interactions in biological or soft-matter…
A wide range of disordered materials, from biological to geological assemblies, feature discrete elements undergoing large shape changes. How significant geometrical variations at the microscopic scale affect the response of the assembly,…
The dynamical properties of a dense horizontally vibrated bidisperse granular monolayer are experimentally investigated. The quench protocol produces states with a frozen structure of the assembly, but the remaining degrees of freedom…
A spacetime crystal is a phase of matter that spontaneously develops periodic order in both space and time. Spacetime crystals have been experimentally observed in microscopic quantum many-body systems and, very recently, in a mesoscopic…
We study in this work the dynamics of a collection of identical hollow spheres (ping-pong balls) that rest on a horizontal metallic grid. Fluidization is achieved by means of a turbulent air current coming from below. The upflow is adjusted…