The phase behavior of helical packings of thermoresponsive microspheres
inside glass capillaries is studied as a function of volume fraction. Stable
packings with long-range orientational order appear to evolve abruptly to
disordered states as particle volume fraction is reduced, consistent with
recent hard sphere simulations. We quantify this transition using correlations
and susceptibilities of the orientational order parameter psi_6. The emergence
of coexisting metastable packings, as well as coexisting ordered and disordered
states, is also observed. These findings support the notion of phase
transition-like behavior in quasi-1D systems.Comment: 5 pages, with additional 4 pages of supplemental material, accepted
to Physical Review E: Rapid Communication
