Berlin 2015 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 5: Colloids and Complex Liquids I (joint session CPP/ BP/ DY)

DY 5.9: Talk

Monday, March 16, 2015, 11:45–12:00, C 130

Structure analysis of stable and metastable hard sphere fluids by confocal microscopy — Achim Lederer¹ and •Hans Joachim Schöpe² — ¹Institut für Physik, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität, Staudingerweg 7, 55128 Mainz, Germany — ²Eberhards Karls Universität Tübingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 10, 72026 Tübingen, Germany

The structural properties of the metastable melt play a key role in the understanding of the glass transition and crystal nucleation. Using laser scanning confocal microscopy we study the structure of stable and metastable colloidal hard sphere fluids. The used system was characterized with extreme care to allow a meaningful comparison with theory and simulation. While the Percus-Yevick (PY) approximation works quite perfectly for stable fluids at moderate volume fractions, it starts to fail for volume fractions larger than 0.45 approaching the freezing transition at 0.494. Strong deviation can be observed in metastable fluids: In the pair correlation function g(r) the experimental data display a significant higher principal peak and a different shape in the higher order peaks than the PY-approximation. In the static structure factor S(q) the data display a split in the second structure factor maximum suggesting a local short range crystalline like order. An analysis on the particle level reveals the existence of clusters with higher bond orientation order (q6(i)q6*(j)), although the overall hexagonal order of the ensemble does not increase.