Lamellar order, microphase structures and glassy phase in a field theoretic model for charged colloids

In this paper we present a detailed analytical study of the phase diagram and of the structural properties of a field theoretic model with a short-range attraction and a competing long-range screened repulsion. We provide a full derivation and expanded discussion and digression on results previously reported briefly in M. Tarzia and A. Coniglio, Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 075702 (2006). The model contains the essential features of the effective interaction potential among charged colloids in polymeric solutions. We employ the self-consistent Hartree approximation and a replica approach, and we show that varying the parameters of the repulsive potential and the temperature yields a phase coexistence, a lamellar and a glassy phase. Our results suggest that the cluster phase observed in charged colloids might be the signature of an underlying equilibrium lamellar phase, hidden on experimental time scales, and emphasize that the formation of microphase structures may play a prominent role in the process of colloidal gelation.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure

Anderson model on Bethe lattices: density of states, localization properties and isolated eigenvalue

We revisit the Anderson localization problem on Bethe lattices, putting in contact various aspects which have been previously only discussed separately. For the case of connectivity 3 we compute by the cavity method the density of states and the evolution of the mobility edge with disorder. Furthermore, we show that below a certain critical value of the disorder the smallest eigenvalue remains delocalized and separated by all the others (localized) ones by a gap. We also study the evolution of the mobility edge at the center of the band with the connectivity, and discuss the large connectivity limit.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures, Proceedings of the YKIS2009 conference, references adde

Nonmonotonic crossover and scaling behaviors in a disordered 1D quasicrystal

We consider a noninteracting disordered 1D quasicrystal in the weak disorder regime. We show that the critical states of the pure model approach strong localization in strikingly different ways, depending on their renormalization properties. A finite size scaling analysis of the inverse participation ratios of states (IPR) of the quasicrystal shows that they are described by several kinds of scaling functions. While most states show a progressively increasing IPR as a function of the scaling variable, other states exhibit a nonmonotonic `re-entrant' behavior wherein the IPR first decreases, and passes through a minimum, before increasing. This surprising behavior is explained in the framework of perturbation renormalization group treatment, where wavefunctions can be computed analytically as a function of the hopping amplitude ratio and the disorder, however it is not specific to this model. Our results should help to clarify results of recent studies of localization due to random and quasiperiodic potentials.Comment: Revised and expanded text (10 pages, 9 figs) as accepted for publication in Phys Rev

Renormalization group analysis of the random first order transition

We consider the approach describing glass formation in liquids as a progressive trapping in an exponentially large number of metastable states. To go beyond the mean-field setting, we provide a real-space renormalization group (RG) analysis of the associated replica free-energy functional. The present approximation yields in finite dimensions an ideal glass transition similar to that found in mean field. However, we find that along the RG flow the properties associated with metastable glassy states, such as the configurational entropy, are only defined up to a characteristic length scale that diverges as one approaches the ideal glass transition. The critical exponents characterizing the vicinity of the transition are the usual ones associated with a first-order discontinuity fixed point.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure

On the solution of a `solvable' model of an ideal glass of hard spheres displaying a jamming transition

We discuss the analytical solution through the cavity method of a mean field model that displays at the same time an ideal glass transition and a set of jamming points. We establish the equations describing this system, and we discuss some approximate analytical solutions and a numerical strategy to solve them exactly. We compare these methods and we get insight into the reliability of the theory for the description of finite dimensional hard spheres.Comment: 31 pages, 8 figure