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Register a new userTime scales of supercooled water and implications for reversible polyamorphism
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Deeply supercooled water exhibits complex dynamics with large density fluctuations, ice coarsening and characteristic time scales extending from picoseconds to milliseconds. Here, we discuss implications of these time scales as they pertain to two-phase coexistence and to molecular simulations of supercooled water. Specifically, we argue that it is possible to discount liquid-liquid criticality because the time scales imply that correlation lengths for such behavior would be bounded by no more than a few nanometers. Similarly, it is possible to discount two-liquid coexistence because the time scales imply a bounded interfacial free energy that cannot grow in proportion to a macroscopic surface area. From time scales alone, therefore, we see that coexisting domains of differing density in supercooled water can be no more than nano-scale transient fluctuations.
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Liquid polyamorphism is the intriguing possibility for a single component substance to exist in multiple liquid phases. We propose a minimal model for this phenomenon. Starting with a classical binary lattice model with critical azeotropy and liquid-liquid demixing, we allow interconversion of the two species, turning the system into a single-component fluid with two states differing in energy and entropy. Changing one interaction parameter allows to continuously switch from a liquid-liquid transition, terminated by a critical point, to a singularity-free scenario, exhibiting water-like anomalies but without polyamorphism. This resolves a controversy about how a liquid-liquid critical point can be found or not in simulations. The model provides a unified theoretical framework to describe supercooled water and a variety of polyamorphic liquids with water-like anomalies.
The well-known classical nucleation theory (CNT) for the free energy barrier towards formation of a nucleus of critical size of the new stable phase within the parent metastable phase fails to take into account the influence of other metastable phases having density/order intermediate between the parent metastable phase and the final stable phase. This lacuna can be more serious than capillary approximation or spherical shape assumption made in CNT. This issue is particularly significant in ice nucleation because liquid water shows rich phase diagram consisting of two (high and low density) liquid phases in supercooled state. The explanations of thermodynamic and dynamic anomalies of supercooled water often invoke the possible influence of a liquid-liquid transition between two metastable liquid phases. To investigate both the role of thermodynamic anomalies and presence of distinct metastable liquid phases in supercooled water on ice nucleation, we employ density functional theoretical approach to find nucleation free energy barrier in different regions of phase diagram. The theory makes a number of striking predictions, such as a dramatic lowering of nucleation barrier due to presence of a metastable intermediate phase and crossover in the dependence of free energy barrier on temperature near liquid-liquid critical point. These predictions can be tested by computer simulations as well as by controlled experiments.
Brownian motion has played important roles in many different fields of science since its origin was first explained by Albert Einstein in 1905. Einsteins theory of Brownian motion, however, is only applicable at long time scales. At short time scales, Brownian motion of a suspended particle is not completely random, due to the inertia of the particle and the surrounding fluid. Moreover, the thermal force exerted on a particle suspended in a liquid is not a white noise, but is colored. Recent experimental developments in optical trapping and detection have made this new regime of Brownian motion accessible. This review summarizes related theories and recent experiments on Brownian motion at short time scales, with a focus on the measurement of the instantaneous velocity of a Brownian particle in a gas and the observation of the transition from ballistic to diffusive Brownian motion in a liquid.
We use the recently-proposed emph{compressible cell} Ising-like model [Phys. Rev. Lett. textbf{120}, 120603 (2018)] to estimate the ratio between thermal expansivity and specific heat (the Gruneisen parameter $Gamma$) in supercooled water. Near the critical pressure and temperature, $Gamma$ increases. The $Gamma$ value diverges near the pressure-induced finite-$T$ critical end-point [Phys. Rev. Lett. textbf{104}, 245701 (2010)] and quantum critical points [Phys. Rev. Lett. textbf{91}, 066404 (2003)], which indicates that two energy scales are governing the system. This enhanced behavior of $Gamma$ is caused by the coexistence of high- and low-density liquids [Science textbf{358}, 1543 (2017)]. Our findings support the proposed liquid-liquid critical point in supercooled water in the No-Mans Land regime, and indicates possible applications of this model to other systems.
Recent computational studies have reported evidence of a metastable liquid-liquid phase transition (LLPT) in molecular models of water under deeply supercooled conditions. A competing hypothesis suggests, however, that non-equilibrium artifacts associated with coarsening of the stable crystal phase have been mistaken for an LLPT in these models. Such artifacts are posited to arise due to a separation of time scales in which density fluctuations in the supercooled liquid relax orders of magnitude faster than those associated with bond-orientational order. Here, we use molecular simulation to investigate the relaxation of density and bond-orientational fluctuations in three molecular models of water (ST2, TIP5P and TIP4P/2005) in the vicinity of their reported LLPT. For each model, we find that density is the slowly relaxing variable under such conditions. We also observe similar behavior in the coarse-grained mW model of water. Our findings therefore challenge the key physical assumption underlying the competing hypothesis.e find that density relaxes significantly faster than bond-orientational order, as incorrectly predicted by this competing hypothesis.
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