Hysteresis and re-entrant melting of a self-organized system of classical particles confined in a parabolic trap
arXiv:0707.1498 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevE.77.031608
Abstract
A self-organized system composed of classical particles confined in a two-dimensional parabolic trap and interacting through a potential with a short-range attractive part and long-range repulsive part is studied as function of temperature. The influence of the competition between the short-range attractive part of the inter-particle potential and its long-range repulsive part on the melting temperature is studied. Different behaviors of the melting temperature are found depending on the screening length () and the strength () of the attractive part of the inter-particle potential. A re-entrant behavior and a thermal induced phase transition is observed in a small region of ()-space. A structural hysteresis effect is observed as a function of temperature and physically understood as due to the presence of a potential barrier between different configurations of the system.
8 pages, 6 figures