Search results for "Condensed Matter - Soft Condensed Matter"
showing 10 items of 364 documents
Three dimensional instability of flexible ferromagnetic filament loop
2010
Dynamics of flexible ferromagnetic filaments in an external magnetic field is considered. We report the existence of a buckling instability of the ferromagnetic filament at the magnetic field reversion, which leads to the formation of a metastable loop. Its relaxation through three dimensional transformation of the configurations is observed experimentally and confirmed by numerical simulations. Bending modulus of the flexible ferromagnetic filaments synthesized by linking micron size core-shell ferromagnetic particles with DNA fragments is estimated by comparison of the parameters of the loops observed in the experiment with theoretical calculations. Formation of the loop and its relaxatio…
Kinetics of phase separation in thin films: simulations for the diffusive case.
2005
We study the diffusion-driven kinetics of phase separation of a symmetric binary mixture (AB), confined in a thin-film geometry between two parallel walls. We consider cases where (a) both walls preferentially attract the same component (A), and (b) one wall attracts A and the other wall attracts B (with the same strength). We focus on the interplay of phase separation and wetting at the walls, which is referred to as {\it surface-directed spinodal decomposition} (SDSD). The formation of SDSD waves at the two surfaces, with wave-vectors oriented perpendicular to them, often results in a metastable layered state (also referred to as ``stratified morphology''). This state is reminiscent of th…
Non-Equilibrium Markov State Modeling of the Globule-Stretch Transition
2016
We describe a systematic approach to construct coarse-grained Markov state models from molecular dynamics data of systems driven into a nonequilibrium steady state. We apply this method to study the globule-stretch transition of a single tethered model polymer in shear flow. The folding and unfolding rates of the coarse-grained model agree with the original detailed model. We demonstrate that the folding and unfolding proceeds through the same narrow region of configuration space but along different cycles.
Nature of crossover from classical to Ising-like critical behavior
1998
We present an accurate numerical determination of the crossover from classical to Ising-like critical behavior upon approach of the critical point in three-dimensional systems. The possibility to vary the Ginzburg number in our simulations allows us to cover the entire crossover region. We employ these results to scrutinize several semi-phenomenological crossover scaling functions that are widely used for the analysis of experimental results. In addition we present strong evidence that the exponent relations do not hold between effective exponents.
Nonlinear response functions in an exponential trap model
2014
The nonlinear response to an oscillating field is calculated for a kinetic trap model with an exponential density of states and the results are compared to those for the model with a Gaussian density of states. The calculations are limited to the high temperature phase of the model. It is found that the results are qualitatively different only in a temperature range near the glass transition temperature $T_0$ of the exponential model. While for the Gaussian model the choice of the dynamical variable that couples to the field has no impact on the shape of the linear response, this is different for the exponential model. Here, it is found that also the relaxation time strongly depends on the …
Ornstein-Zernike equation and Percus-Yevick theory for molecular crystals
2004
We derive the Ornstein-Zernike equation for molecular crystals of axially symmetric particles and apply the Percus-Yevick approximation to this system. The one-particle orientational distribution function has a nontrivial dependence on the orientation and is needed as an input. Despite some differences, the Ornstein-Zernike equation for molecular crystals has a similar structure as for liquids. We solve both equations for hard ellipsoids on a sc lattice. Compared to molecular liquids, the tensorial orientational correlators exhibit less structure. However, depending on the lengths a and b of the rotation axis and the perpendicular axes of the ellipsoids, different behavior is found. For obl…
Strongly confined fluids: Diverging time scales and slowing down of equilibration
2016
The Newtonian dynamics of strongly confined fluids exhibits a rich behavior. Its confined and unconfined degrees of freedom decouple for confinement length $L \to 0$. In that case and for a slit geometry the intermediate scattering functions $S_{\mu\nu}(q,t)$ simplify, resulting for $(\mu,\nu) \neq (0,0)$ in a Knudsen-gas like behavior of the confined degrees of freedom, and otherwise in $S_{\parallel}(q,t)$, describing the structural relaxation of the unconfined ones. Taking the coupling into account we prove that the energy fluctuations relax exponentially. For smooth potentials the relaxation times diverge as $L^{-3}$ and $L^{-4}$, respectively, for the confined and unconfined degrees of…
Hunting active Brownian particles: Learning optimal behavior
2021
We numerically study active Brownian particles that can respond to environmental cues through a small set of actions (switching their motility and turning left or right with respect to some direction) which are motivated by recent experiments with colloidal self-propelled Janus particles. We employ reinforcement learning to find optimal mappings between the state of particles and these actions. Specifically, we first consider a predator-prey situation in which prey particles try to avoid a predator. Using as reward the squared distance from the predator, we discuss the merits of three state-action sets and show that turning away from the predator is the most successful strategy. We then rem…
Calculation of local pressure tensors in systems with many-body interactions
2003
Local pressures are important in the calculation of interface tensions and in analyzing micromechanical behavior. The calculation of local pressures in computer simulations has been limited to systems with pairwise interactions between the particles, which is not sufficient for chemically detailed systems with many-body potentials such as angles and torsions. We introduce a method to calculate local pressures in systems with n-body interactions (n=2,3,4, . . .) based on a micromechanical definition of the pressure tensor. The local pressure consists of a kinetic contribution from the linear momentum of the particles and an internal contribution from dissected many-body interactions by infin…
Polydisperse hard spheres: crystallization kinetics in small systems and role of local structure
2016
We study numerically the crystallization of a hard-sphere mixture with 8\% polydispersity. Although often used as a model glass former, for small system sizes we observe crystallization in molecular dynamics simulations. This opens the possibility to study the competition between crystallization and structural relaxation of the melt, which typically is out of reach due to the disparate timescales. We quantify the dependence of relaxation and crystallization times on density and system size. For one density and system size we perform a detailed committor analysis to investigate the suitability of local structures as order parameters to describe the crystallization process. We find that local…