Symmetry-break in Voronoi tessellations

We analyse in a common framework the properties of the Voronoi tessellations resulting from regular 2D and 3D crystals and those of tessellations generated by Poisson distributions of points, thus joining on symmetry breaking processes and the approach to uniform random distributions of seeds. We perturb crystalline structures in 2D and 3D with a spatial Gaussian noise whose adimensional strength is α and analyse the statistical properties of the cells of the resulting Voronoi tessellations using an ensemble approach. In 2D we consider triangular, square and hexagonal regular lattices, resulting into hexagonal, square and triangular tessellations, respectively. In 3D we consider the simple cubic (SC), body-centred cubic (BCC), and face-centred cubic (FCC) crystals, whose corresponding Voronoi cells are the cube, the truncated octahedron, and the rhombic dodecahedron, respectively. In 2D, for all values α>0, hexagons constitute the most common class of cells. Noise destroys the triangular and square tessellations, which are structurally unstable, as their topological properties are discontinuous in α=0. On the contrary, the honeycomb hexagonal tessellation is topologically stable and, experimentally, all Voronoi cells are hexagonal for small but finite noise with α0.5), memory of the specific initial unperturbed state is lost, because the statistical properties of the three perturbed regular tessellations are indistinguishable. When α>2, results converge to those of Poisson-Voronoi tessellations. In 2D, while the isoperimetric ratio increases with noise for the perturbed hexagonal tessellation, for the perturbed triangular and square tessellations it is optimised for specific value of noise intensity. The same applies in 3D, where noise degrades the isoperimetric ratio for perturbed FCC and BCC lattices, whereas the opposite holds for perturbed SCC lattices. This allows for formulating a weaker form of the Kelvin conjecture. By analysing jointly the statistical properties of the area and of the volume of the cells, we discover that also the cells shape heavily fluctuates when noise is introduced in the system. In 2D, the geometrical properties of n-sided cells change with α until the Poisson-Voronoi limit is reached for α>2; in this limit the Desch law for perimeters is shown to be not valid and a square root dependence on n is established, which agrees with exact asymptotic results. Anomalous scaling relations are observed between the perimeter and the area in the 2D and between the areas and the volumes of the cells in 3D: except for the hexagonal (2D) and FCC structure (3D), this applies also for infinitesimal noise. In the Poisson-Voronoi limit, the anomalous exponent is about 0.17 in both the 2D and 3D case. A positive anomaly in the scaling indicates that large cells preferentially feature large isoperimetric quotients. As the number of faces is strongly correlated with the sphericity (cells with more faces are bulkier), in 3D it is shown that the anomalous scaling is heavily reduced when we perform power law fits separately on cells with a specific number of faces

Understanding fragility in supercooled Lennard-Jones mixtures. I. Locally preferred structures

We reveal the existence of systematic variations of isobaric fragility in different supercooled Lennard-Jones binary mixtures by performing molecular dynamics simulations. The connection between fragility and local structures in the bulk is analyzed by means of a Voronoi construction. We find that clusters of particles belonging to locally preferred structures form slow, long-lived domains, whose spatial extension increases by decreasing temperature. As a general rule, a more rapid growth, upon supercooling, of such domains is associated to a more pronounced super-Arrhenius behavior, hence to a larger fragility.Comment: 14 pages, 14 figures, minor revisions, one figure adde

Poissonian and non Poissonian Voronoi Diagrams with application to the aggregation of molecules

The distributions that regulate the spatial domains of the Poissonian Voronoi Diagrams are discussed adopting the sum of gamma variate of argument two. The distributions that arise from the product and quotient of two gamma variates of argument two are also derived. Three examples of non Poissonian seeds for the Voronoi Diagrams are discussed. The developed algorithm allows the simulation of an aggregation of methanol and water.Comment: 18 pages 10 Figure

Stability of atoms and molecules in an ultrarelativistic Thomas-Fermi-Weizsaecker model

We consider the zero mass limit of a relativistic Thomas-Fermi-Weizsaecker model of atoms and molecules. We find bounds for the critical nuclear charges that ensure stability.Comment: 8 pages, LaTe

Weighted Scale-free Networks in Euclidean Space Using Local Selection Rule

A spatial scale-free network is introduced and studied whose motivation has been originated in the growing Internet as well as the Airport networks. We argue that in these real-world networks a new node necessarily selects one of its neighbouring local nodes for connection and is not controlled by the preferential attachment as in the Barab\'asi-Albert (BA) model. This observation has been mimicked in our model where the nodes pop-up at randomly located positions in the Euclidean space and are connected to one end of the nearest link. In spite of this crucial difference it is observed that the leading behaviour of our network is like the BA model. Defining link weight as an algebraic power of its Euclidean length, the weight distribution and the non-linear dependence of the nodal strength on the degree are analytically calculated. It is claimed that a power law decay of the link weights with time ensures such a non-linear behavior. Switching off the Euclidean space from the same model yields a much simpler definition of the Barab\'asi-Albert model where numerical effort grows linearly with $N$.Comment: 6 pages, 6 figure

Self-assembling DNA-caged particles: nanoblocks for hierarchical self-assembly

DNA is an ideal candidate to organize matter on the nanoscale, primarily due to the specificity and complexity of DNA based interactions. Recent advances in this direction include the self-assembly of colloidal crystals using DNA grafted particles. In this article we theoretically study the self-assembly of DNA-caged particles. These nanoblocks combine DNA grafted particles with more complicated purely DNA based constructs. Geometrically the nanoblock is a sphere (DNA grafted particle) inscribed inside a polyhedron (DNA cage). The faces of the DNA cage are open, and the edges are made from double stranded DNA. The cage vertices are modified DNA junctions. We calculate the equilibriuim yield of self-assembled, tetrahedrally caged particles, and discuss their stability with respect to alternative structures. The experimental feasability of the method is discussed. To conclude we indicate the usefulness of DNA-caged particles as nanoblocks in a hierarchical self-assembly strategy.Comment: v2: 21 pages, 8 figures; revised discussion in Sec. 2, replaced 2 figures, added new reference

Dynamical maximum entropy approach to flocking

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Lattice Delone simplices with super-exponential volume

In this short note we give a construction of an infinite series of Delone simplices whose relative volume grows super-exponentially with their dimension. This dramatically improves the previous best lower bound, which was linear.Comment: 7 pages; v2: revised version improves our exponential lower bound to a super-exponential on

Optimality and uniqueness of the Leech lattice among lattices

We prove that the Leech lattice is the unique densest lattice in R^24. The proof combines human reasoning with computer verification of the properties of certain explicit polynomials. We furthermore prove that no sphere packing in R^24 can exceed the Leech lattice's density by a factor of more than 1+1.65*10^(-30), and we give a new proof that E_8 is the unique densest lattice in R^8.Comment: 39 page