We study a mass transport model, where spherical particles diffusing on a ring can stochastically exchange volume $v$, with the constraint of a fixed total volume $V=sum_{i=1}^N v_i$, $N$ being the total number of particles. The particles, referred t
o as $p$-spheres, have a linear size that behaves as $v_i^{1/p}$ and our model thus represents a gas of polydisperse hard rods with variable diameters $v_i^{1/p}$. We show that our model admits a factorized steady state distribution which provides the size distribution that minimizes the free energy of a polydisperse hard rod system, under the constraints of fixed $N$ and $V$. Complementary approaches (explicit construction of the steady state distribution on the one hand ; density functional theory on the other hand) completely and consistently specify the behaviour of the system. A real space condensation transition is shown to take place for $p>1$: beyond a critical density a macroscopic aggregate is formed and coexists with a critical fluid phase. Our work establishes the bridge between stochastic mass transport approaches and the optimal polydispersity of hard sphere fluids studied in previous articles.
We analyze fluctuation-dissipation relations in the Backgammon model: a system that displays glassy behavior at zero temperature due to the existence of entropy barriers. We study local and global fluctuation relations for the different observables i
n the model. For the case of a global perturbation we find a unique negative fluctuation-dissipation ratio that is independent of the observable and which diverges linearly with the waiting time. This result suggests that a negative effective temperature can be observed in glassy systems even in the absence of thermally activated processes.
We study the kinetics of nonlinear irreversible fragmentation. Here fragmentation is induced by interactions/collisions between pairs of particles, and modelled by general classes of interaction kernels, and for several types of breakage models. We c
onstruct initial value and scaling solutions of the fragmentation equations, and apply the non-vanishing mass flux criterion for the occurrence of shattering transitions. These properties enable us to determine the phase diagram for the occurrence of shattering states and of scaling states in the phase space of model parameters.
The structure of polydisperse hard sphere fluids, in the presence of a wall, is studied by the Rosenfeld density functional theory. Within this approach, the local excess free energy depends on only four combinations of the full set of density fields
. The case of continuous polydispersity thereby becomes tractable. We predict, generically, an oscillatory size segregation close to the wall, and connect this, by a perturbation theory for narrow distributions, with the reversible work for changing the size of one particle in a monodisperse reference fluid.
