Related papers: Arrested phase separation in a short-ranged attrac…
We study the phase diagram of glassy systems in presence of an attractive coupling among real replicas. We find competition among a localized and a delocalized phase, that are separated by a coexistence line as in ordinary first order phase…
Phase separation dynamics with an initially non-uniform concentration are studied. Critical and off-critical behavior is observed simultaneously. A mechanism for an expanding phase separated region is demonstrated and the time dependence of…
We develop a thermodynamic description of particles held at a fixed surface potential. This system is of particular interest in view of the continuing controversy over the possibility of a fluid-fluid phase separation in aqueous colloidal…
This thesis is devoted to the study of physical systems embedded within the field of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. Specifically, the state of the systems of interest constitutes a stochastic process that can be externally driven by…
We study concentrated colloidal suspensions, a model system which has a glass transition. Samples in the glassy state show aging, in that the motion of the colloidal particles slows as the sample ages from an initial state. We study the…
The simplest statistical-mechanical model of crystalline formation (or alloy formation) that includes electronic degrees of freedom is solved exactly in the limit of large spatial dimensions and infinite interaction strength. The solutions…
Phase separation is a fundamental phenomenon that produces spatially heterogeneous patterns in soft matter. In this Lecture Note we show that phase separation in these materials generally belongs to what we call "viscoelastic phase…
We study the thermodynamic behavior of nonpolar liquid mixtures in the vicinity of curved charged objects, such as electrodes or charged colloids. For small enough charge on the object, or equivalently, small potential, the…
Using computer simulations and a thermodynamically self consistent integral equation we investigate the phase behaviour and thermodynamic anomalies of a fluid composed of spherical particles interacting via a two-scale ramp potential (a…
In this chapter, a study of the glass transitions in colloidal systems is presented, in connection with gelation, mainly from theoretical and simulation results. Mode Coupling Theory, which anticipated the existence of attraction driven…
The attractive tail of the intermolecular interaction affects very weakly the structural properties of liquids, while it affects dramatically their dynamical ones. Via the numerical simulations of model systems not prone to crystallization,…
Attractive colloids display two distinct amorphous solid phases: the attractive glass, due to particle bonding, and the repulsive glass, due to the hard core repulsion. By means of a microscopic mean field approach, we analyze their…
Despite the omnipresence of colloidal suspensions, little is known about the influence of shape on phase transformations, especially in nonequilibrium. To date, real-space imaging results are limited to systems composed of spherical…
We study the equilibrium and dynamical properties of a spherical version of the frustrated Blume-Emery-Griffiths model at mean field level for attractive particle-particle coupling (K>0). Beyond a second order transition line from a…
We consider a mixture of passive (i.e., Brownian) and active (e.g., bacterial or colloidal swimmers) particles, and analyze the stability conditions of either uniformly mixed or phase segregated steady states consisting of phases enriched…
We theoretically study mixtures of chemically-interacting particles, which produce or consume a chemical to which they are attracted or repelled, in the most general case of many coexisting species. We find a new class of active phase…
Concentrated aqueous solutions of the protein lysozyme undergo a liquid solid transition upon a temperature quench into the unstable spinodal region below a characteristic arrest temperature of Tf=15C. We use video microscopy and…
Phase separation can drive spatial organization of multicomponent mixtures. For instance in developing animal embryos, effective phase separation descriptions have been used to account for the spatial organization of different tissue types.…
The aging of a charged colloidal system has been studied by Small Angle X-rays Scattering, in the exchanged momentum range Q=0.03 - 5 nm-1, and by Dynamic Light Scattering, at different clay concentrations (Cw =0.6 % - 2.8 %). The static…
We present a generic mechanism by which reproducing microorganisms, with a diffusivity that depends on the local population density, can form stable patterns. It is known that a decrease of swimming speed with density can promote separation…