0000000000023445
AUTHOR
Katharina Vollmayr
Finite size effects at thermally-driven first order phase transitions: A phenomenological theory of the order parameter distribution
We consider the rounding and shifting of a firstorder transition in a finited-dimensional hypercubicL d geometry,L being the linear dimension of the system, and surface effects are avoided by periodic boundary conditions. We assume that upon lowering the temperature the system discontinuously goes to one ofq ordered states, such as it e.g. happens for the Potts model ind=3 forq≧3, with the correlation length ξ of order parameter fluctuation staying finite at the transition. We then describe each of theseq ordered phases and the disordered phase forL≫ξ by a properly weighted Gaussian. From this phenomenological ansatz for the total distribution of the order parameter, all moments of interest…
Investigating the cooling rate dependence of amorphous silica: A computer simulation study
We use molecular dynamics computer simulations to study the dependence of the properties of amorphous silica on the cooling rate with which the glass has been produced. In particular we show that the density, the glass transition temperature, the radial distribution function and the distribution of the size of the rings depend on the cooling rate.
MONTE CARLO METHODS FOR FIRST ORDER PHASE TRANSITIONS: SOME RECENT PROGRESS
This brief review discusses methods to locate and characterize first order phase transitions, paying particular attention to finite size effects. In the first part, the order parameter probability distribution and its fourth-order cumulant is discussed for thermally driven first-order transitions (the 3-state Potts model in d=3 dimensions is treated as an example). First-order transitions are characterized by a minimum of the cumulant, which gets very deep for large enough systems. In the second part, we discuss how to locate first order phase boundaries ending in a critical point in a large parameter space. As an example, the study of the unmixing transition of asymmetric polymer mixtures…
Computer simulation of models for the structural glass transition
In order to test theoretical concepts on the glass transition, we investigate several models of glassy materials by means of Monte Carlo (MC) and Molecular Dynamics (MD) computer simulations. It is shown that also simplified models exhibit a glass transition which is in qualitative agreement with experiment and that thus such models are useful to study this phenomenon. However, the glass transition temperture as well as the structural properties of the frozen-in glassy phase depend strongly on the cooling history, and the extrapolation to the limit of infinitely slow cooling velocity is nontrivial, which makes the identification of the (possible) underlying equilibrium transition very diffi…
Cooling-rate effects in amorphous silica: A computer-simulation study
Using molecular dynamics computer simulations we investigate how in silica the glass transition and the properties of the resulting glass depend on the cooling rate with which the sample is cooled. By coupling the system to a heat bath with temperature $T_b(t)$, we cool the system linearly in time, $T(t)=T_i-\gamma t$, where $\gamma$ is the cooling rate. We find that the glass transition temperature $T_g$ is in accordance with a logarithmic dependence on the cooling rate. In qualitative accordance with experiments, the density shows a local maximum, which becomes more pronounced with decreasing cooling rate. The enthalpy, density and the thermal expansion coefficient for the glass at zero t…
Molecular Dynamics Computer Simulation of Cooling Rate Effects in a Lennard-Jones Glass
We present the results of a molecular dynamics computer simulation of a binary Lennard-Jones mixture. We simulate a quench of the system from a liquid state at high temperatures to a glass state at zero temperature by coupling the system to a heat bath that has a temperature that decreases linearly (with slope -γ) with time. We investigate how the residual density of the system varies as a function of the cooling rate γ and rationalize our results by means of the dependence of the coordination number of the particles on the cooling rate.