Metastable states of microgel fluids with Hertzian interaction potentials

Faizyab Ahmad and Shankar P. Das

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 2022, vol. 608, issue P1

Abstract: We consider here a coarse-grained model for a soft matter system in which the particles interact with the Hertzian potential uH(r)=ϵ01−r/σμ, characterized by parameters {ϵ0,σ,μ}. Using the coarse-grained one-particle density ρ(x) as an order parameter, the free energy functional typical of the classical density functional theory (DFT) is studied. The static correlations of the uniform density state, required as an input in the DFT model, is calculated using the Bridge function method for the Hertzian fluid. The free energy functional analysis obtains new minima signifying metastable states between uniform liquid and the crystal. In particular, using classical DFT methods, a metastable amorphous state characterized by a low degree of mass localization is predicted. We obtain the transformation line on the density-temperature plot showing the possible liquid–liquid transition between the uniform liquid state and the inhomogeneous liquid state. With the increase of ϵ0 for the Hertzian interaction, the model reproduces the hard-sphere results.

Keywords: Classical density-functional-theory; Free-energy-landscape; Hertzian-potential; Hard-sphere-fluid; Static-structure factor; Liquid–liquid transition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0378437122008202
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only. Journal offers the option of making the article available online on Science direct for a fee of $3,000

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:phsmap:v:608:y:2022:i:p1:s0378437122008202

DOI: 10.1016/j.physa.2022.128262

Access Statistics for this article

Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications is currently edited by K. A. Dawson, J. O. Indekeu, H.E. Stanley and C. Tsallis

More articles in Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().