Browsing by Subject "Glass"

Now showing 1 - 6 of 6
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    Dimensional study of the caging order parameter at the glass transition.
    (Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A, 2012-08-28) Charbonneau, Patrick; Ikeda, Atsushi; Parisi, Giorgio; Zamponi, Francesco
    The glass problem is notoriously hard and controversial. Even at the mean-field level, little is agreed upon regarding why a fluid becomes sluggish while exhibiting but unremarkable structural changes. It is clear, however, that the process involves self-caging, which provides an order parameter for the transition. It is also broadly assumed that this cage should have a gaussian shape in the mean-field limit. Here we show that this ansatz does not hold. By performing simulations as a function of spatial dimension d, we find the cage to keep a nontrivial form. Quantitative mean-field descriptions of the glass transition, such as mode-coupling theory, density functional theory, and replica theory, all miss this crucial element. Although the mean-field random first-order transition scenario of the glass transition is qualitatively supported here and non-mean-field corrections are found to remain small on decreasing d, reconsideration of its implementation is needed for it to result in a coherent description of experimental observations.
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    Dimensional study of the dynamical arrest in a random Lorentz gas.
    (Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys, 2015-04) Jin, Yuliang; Charbonneau, Patrick
    The random Lorentz gas (RLG) is a minimal model for transport in heterogeneous media. Upon increasing the obstacle density, it exhibits a growing subdiffusive transport regime and then a dynamical arrest. Here, we study the dimensional dependence of the dynamical arrest, which can be mapped onto the void percolation transition for Poisson-distributed point obstacles. We numerically determine the arrest in dimensions d=2-6. Comparison of the results with standard mode-coupling theory reveals that the dynamical theory prediction grows increasingly worse with d. In an effort to clarify the origin of this discrepancy, we relate the dynamical arrest in the RLG to the dynamic glass transition of the infinite-range Mari-Kurchan-model glass former. Through a mixed static and dynamical analysis, we then extract an improved dimensional scaling form as well as a geometrical upper bound for the arrest. The results suggest that understanding the asymptotic behavior of the random Lorentz gas may be key to surmounting fundamental difficulties with the mode-coupling theory of glasses.
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    Hard-sphere crystallization gets rarer with increasing dimension.
    (Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys, 2009-12) van Meel, JA; Charbonneau, B; Fortini, A; Charbonneau, P
    We recently found that crystallization of monodisperse hard spheres from the bulk fluid faces a much higher free-energy barrier in four than in three dimensions at equivalent supersaturation, due to the increased geometrical frustration between the simplex-based fluid order and the crystal [J. A. van Meel, D. Frenkel, and P. Charbonneau, Phys. Rev. E 79, 030201(R) (2009)]. Here, we analyze the microscopic contributions to the fluid-crystal interfacial free energy to understand how the barrier to crystallization changes with dimension. We find the barrier to grow with dimension and we identify the role of polydispersity in preventing crystal formation. The increased fluid stability allows us to study the jamming behavior in four, five, and six dimensions and to compare our observations with two recent theories [C. Song, P. Wang, and H. A. Makse, Nature (London) 453, 629 (2008); G. Parisi and F. Zamponi, Rev. Mod. Phys. (to be published)].
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    Numerical detection of the Gardner transition in a mean-field glass former.
    (Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys, 2015-07) Charbonneau, Patrick; Jin, Yuliang; Parisi, Giorgio; Rainone, Corrado; Seoane, Beatriz; Zamponi, Francesco
    Recent theoretical advances predict the existence, deep into the glass phase, of a novel phase transition, the so-called Gardner transition. This transition is associated with the emergence of a complex free energy landscape composed of many marginally stable sub-basins within a glass metabasin. In this study, we explore several methods to detect numerically the Gardner transition in a simple structural glass former, the infinite-range Mari-Kurchan model. The transition point is robustly located from three independent approaches: (i) the divergence of the characteristic relaxation time, (ii) the divergence of the caging susceptibility, and (iii) the abnormal tail in the probability distribution function of cage order parameters. We show that the numerical results are fully consistent with the theoretical expectation. The methods we propose may also be generalized to more realistic numerical models as well as to experimental systems.
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    Postponing the dynamical transition density using competing interactions
    (Granular Matter, 2020-08-01) Charbonneau, P; Kundu, J
    Systems of dense spheres interacting through very short-ranged attraction are known from theory, simulations and colloidal experiments to exhibit dynamical reentrance. Their liquid state can thus be fluidized at higher densities than possible in systems with pure repulsion or with long-ranged attraction. A recent mean-field, infinite-dimensional calculation predicts that the dynamical arrest of the fluid can be further delayed by adding a longer-ranged repulsive contribution to the short-ranged attraction. We examine this proposal by performing extensive numerical simulations in a three-dimensional system. We first find the short-ranged attraction parameters necessary to achieve the densest liquid state, and then explore the parameter space for an additional longer-ranged repulsion that could further enhance reentrance. In the family of systems studied, no significant (within numerical accuracy) delay of the dynamical arrest is observed beyond what is already achieved by the short-ranged attraction. Possible explanations are discussed.
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    Protein purification: adsorption chromatography on controlled pore glass with the use of chaotropic buffers.
    (Science (New York, N.Y.), 1976-01) Bock, HG; Skene, P; Fleischer, S; Cassidy, P; Harshman, S
    Chromatography on controlled pore glass in combination with chaotropic buffers makes possible, in a single step, protein purifications of several hundredfold. The new emphasis is on highly selective controllable adsorption. The method is useful for the purification and concentration of proteins from large volumes of complex media and for the purification of proteins that are poorly soluble or tend to aggregate in aqueous solution D-(-)-Beta-Hydroxybutyrate dehydrogenase, a mitochondrial membrane-bound protein, several soluble proteins, and staphylococcal alpha toxin, which can be purified directly from large volumes of culture medium, are used to illustrate the method.