We find that a system of particles interacting through a simple isotropic potential with a softened core is able to exhibit a rich phase behavior including: a liquid-liquid phase transition in the supercooled phase, as has been suggested for water; a gas-liquid-liquid triple point; a freezing line with anomalous reentrant behavior. The essential ingredient leading to these features resides in that the potential investigated gives origin to two effective core radii.
According to extensive experimental findings, the Ginzburg temperature $t_{G}$ for ionic fluids differs substantially from that of nonionic fluids [Schroer W., Weig{a}rtner H. 2004 {it Pure Appl. Chem.} {bf 76} 19]. A theoretical investigation of this outcome is proposed here by a mean field analysis of the interplay of short and long range interactions on the value of $t_{G}$. We consider a quite general continuous charge-asymmetric model made of charged hard spheres with additional short-range interactions (without electrostatic interactions the model belongs to the same universality class as the 3D Ising model). The effective Landau-Ginzburg Hamiltonian of the full system near its gas-liquid critical point is derived from which the Ginzburg temperature is calculated as a function of the ionicity. The results obtained in this way for $t_{G}$ are in good qualitative and sufficient quantitative agreement with available experimental data.
We study universal behavior in the moving phase of a generic system of motile particles with alignment interactions in the incompressible limit for spatial dimensions $d>2$. Using a dynamical renormalization group analysis, we obtain the exact dynamic, roughness, and anisotropy exponents that describe the scaling behavior of such incompressible systems. This is the first time a compelling argument has been given for the exact values of the anomalous scaling exponents of a flock moving through an isotropic medium in $d>2$.
In this work, Flory-Huggins phase diagrams for correlated random copolymers with realistic chain lengths are calculated. This is achieved in two steps. At first we derive a distribution function of copolymer chains with respect to composition and blockiness. Then we used the method of moments, which was developed by Sollich and Cates [Sollich, P.; Cates, M. E.; Phys. Rev. Lett. 1998, 80, 1365-1368] for polydisperse systems, to reduce the number of degrees of freedom of the computational problem and calculate phase diagrams. We explored how location of transition points and composition of coexisting phases depend on copolymer composition, blockiness and degree of polymerisation. The proposed approach allows to take into account fractionation, which was shown to have effect on the appearance of phase diagrams of statistical copolymers.
The high frequency dynamics of fluid oxygen have been investigated by Inelastic X-ray Scattering. In spite of the markedly supercritical conditions ($Tapprox 2 T_c$, $P>10^2 P_c$), the sound velocity exceeds the hydrodynamic value of about 20%, a feature which is the fingerprint of liquid-like dynamics. The comparison of the present results with literature data obtained in several fluids allow us to identify the extrapolation of the liquid vapor-coexistence line in the ($P/P_c$, $T/T_c$) plane as the relevant edge between liquid- and gas-like dynamics. More interestingly, this extrapolation is very close to the non metal-metal transition in hot dense fluids, at pressure and temperature values as obtained by shock wave experiments. This result points to the existence of a connection between structural modifications and transport properties in dense fluids.
Multicomponent systems are ubiquitous in nature and industry. While the physics of few-component liquid mixtures (i.e., binary and ternary ones) is well-understood and routinely taught in undergraduate courses, the thermodynamic and kinetic properties of $N$-component mixtures with $N>3$ have remained relatively unexplored. An example of such a mixture is provided by the intracellular fluid, in which protein-rich droplets phase separate into distinct membraneless organelles. In this work, we investigate equilibrium phase behavior and morphology of $N$-component liquid mixtures within the Flory-Huggins theory of regular solutions. In order to determine the number of coexisting phases and their compositions, we developed a new algorithm for constructing complete phase diagrams, based on numerical convexification of the discretized free energy landscape. Together with a Cahn-Hilliard approach for kinetics, we employ this method to study mixtures with $N=4$ and $5$ components. We report on both the coarsening behavior of such systems, as well as the resulting morphologies in three spatial dimensions. We discuss how the number of coexisting phases and their compositions can be extracted with Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and K-Means clustering algorithms. Finally, we discuss how one can reverse engineer the interaction parameters and volume fractions of components in order to achieve a range of desired packing structures, such as nested `Russian dolls and encapsulated Janus droplets.