English

Equilibrium glassy phase in a polydisperse hard sphere system

Statistical Mechanics 2010-05-07 v2 Soft Condensed Matter

Abstract

The phase diagram of a polydisperse hard sphere system is examined by numerical minimization of a discretized form of the Ramakrishnan-Yussouff free energy functional. Crystalline and glassy local minima of the free energy are located and the phase diagram in the density-polydispersity plane is mapped out by comparing the free energies of different local minima. The crystalline phase disappears and the glass becomes the equilibrium phase beyond a "terminal" value of the polydispersity. A crystal to glass transition is also observed as the density is increased at high polydispersity. The phase diagram obtained in our study is qualitatively similar to that of hard spheres in a quenched random potential.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0503685,
  title  = {Equilibrium glassy phase in a polydisperse hard sphere system},
  author = {Pinaki Chaudhuri and Smarajit Karmakar and Chandan Dasgupta and H. R. Krishnamurthy and A. K. Sood},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0503685},
  year   = {2010}
}

Comments

4 pages, 4 figures

R2 v1 2026-07-22T11:15:24.385Z