3 research outputs found
Equilibration of Concentrated Hard Sphere Fluids
We report a systematic molecular dynamics study of the isochoric
equilibration of hard-sphere fluids in their metastable regime close to the
glass transition. The thermalization process starts with the system prepared in
a non-equilibrium state with the desired final volume fraction {\phi} but with
a prescribed non-equilibrium static structure factor S_0(k; {\phi}). The
evolution of the {\alpha}- relaxation time {\tau}{\alpha} (k) and long-time
self-diffusion coefficient DL as a function of the evolution time tw is then
monitored for an array of volume fractions. For a given waiting time the plot
of {\tau}{\alpha} (k; {\phi}, tw) as a function of {\phi} exhibits two regimes
corresponding to samples that have fully equilibrated within this waiting time
({\phi} \leq {\phi}(c) (tw)), and to samples for which equilibration is not yet
complete ({\phi} \geq {\phi}(c) (tw)). The crossover volume fraction {\phi}(c)
(tw) increases with tw but seems to saturate to a value {\phi}(a) \equiv
{\phi}(c) (tw \rightarrow \infty) \approx 0.582. We also find that the waiting
time t^(eq)_w({\phi}) required to equilibrate a system grows faster than the
corresponding equilibrium relaxation time, t^(eq)({\phi}) \approx 0.27 \times
[{\tau}{\alpha} (k; {\phi})]^1.43, and that both characteristic times increase
strongly as {\phi} approaches {\phi}^(a), thus suggesting that the measurement
of equilibrium properties at and above {\phi}(a) is experimentally impossible
Dynamic equivalence between atomic and colloidal liquids
We show that the kinetic-theoretical self-diffusion coefficient of an atomic
fluid plays the same role as the short-time self-diffusion coefficient D_S in a
colloidal liquid, in the sense that the dynamic properties of the former, at
times much longer than the mean free time, and properly scaled with D_S, will
indistinguishable from those of a colloidal liquid with the same interaction
potential. One important consequence of such dynamic equivalence is that the
ratio D_L/ D_S of the long-time to the short-time self-diffusion coefficients
must then be the same for both, an atomic and a colloidal system characterized
by the same inter-particle interactions. This naturally extends to atomic
fluids a well-known dynamic criterion for freezing of colloidal liquids[Phys.
Rev. Lett. 70, 1557 (1993)]. We corroborate these predictions by comparing
molecular and Brownian dynamics simulations on (soft- and hard-sphere) model
systems, representative of what we may refer to as the "hard-sphere" dynamic
universality class