Demixing and confinement of non-additive hard-sphere mixtures in slit pores

Disordered multihyperuniformity derived from binary plasmas

Disordered multihyperuniform many-particle systems are exotic amorphous states that allow exquisite color sensing capabilities due to their anomalous suppression of density fluctuations for distinct subsets of particles, as recently evidenced in photoreceptor mosaics in avian retina. Motivated by this biological finding, we present a statistical-mechanical model that rigorously achieves disordered multihyperuniform many-body systems by tuning interactions in binary mixtures of nonadditive hard-disk plasmas. We demonstrate that multihyperuniformity competes with phase separation and stabilizes a clustered phase. Our work provides a systematic means to generate disordered multihyperuniform solids, and hence lays the groundwork to explore their potentially unique photonic, phononic, electronic, and transport properties.

Disordered hyperuniformity in two-component nonadditive hard-disk plasmas

We study the behavior of a classical two-component ionic plasma made up of nonadditive hard disks with additional logarithmic Coulomb interactions between them. Due to the Coulomb repulsion, long-wavelength total density fluctuations are suppressed and the system is globally hyperuniform. Short-range volume effects lead to phase separation or to heterocoordination for positive or negative nonadditivities, respectively. These effects compete with the hidden long-range order imposed by hyperuniformity. As a result, the critical behavior of the mixture is modified, with long-wavelength concentration fluctuations partially damped when the system is charged. It is also shown that the decrease of configurational entropy due to hyperuniformity originates from contributions beyond the two-particle level. Finally, despite global hyperuniformity, we show that in our system the spatial configuration associated with each component separately is not hyperuniform, i.e., the system is not "multihyperuniform."

Investigation of Fluid-Fluid and Solid-Solid Phase Separation of Symmetric Nonadditive Hard Spheres at High Density

We have calculated the values of the critical packing fractions for the mixtures of symmetric nonadditive hard spheres at high densities for small values of the nonadditivity parameter. Calculations have been performed for solid-solid and fluid-fluid demixing transitions. A cluster algorithm for Monte Carlo simulations in a semigrand ensemble was used, and the waste recycling method was applied to improve the accuracy of the calculations. The finite size scaling analysis was employed to compute the critical packing fractions for infinite systems with high accuracy.