Dresden 2017 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 55: Posters - Soft Matter, Glasses

DY 55.2: Poster

Thursday, March 23, 2017, 17:00–19:30, P1A

Excitations and defects in colloidal quasicrystals — •Miriam Martinsons and Michael Schmiedeberg — Institut für Theoretische Physik I, FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany

Quasicrystals are structures with long range order but no translational symmetry. They can have any rotational symmetry including those that are not allowed in periodic crystals. Quasicrystals possess additional degrees of freedom that do not exist in periodic crystals. As a consequence, additional hydrodynamic modes called phasons arise supplemental to the phononic modes known from periodic crystals. Phasonic excitations correspond to correlated rearrangements of the particles.

We study the development of defects close to the melting transition. It has been predicted that dislocations and disclinations cause the melting of the quasicrystal (cf. KTHNY theory [1, 2]). In our studies we reveal the similarities and differences of the melting process of quasicrystals compared to the melting of periodic crystals. Furthermore, we study the influence of phasonic excitations on the formation of defects and their coupling to phononic displacements.

[1] P. De, R. A. Pelcovits, J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 22, 1167 (1989).

[2] P. De, R. A. Pelcovits, Phys. Rev. B 38, 5042 (1988).