Structural transitions of finite spherical Yukawa crystals

Abstract

Small three-dimensional strongly coupled clusters of charged particles in a spherical confinement potential arrange themselves in nested concentric shells. If the particles are immersed into a background plasma the interaction is screened. The cluster shell configuration is known to be sensitive to the screening strength. With increased screening an increased population of the inner shell(s) is observed. Here, we present a detailed analysis of the ground state shell configurations and configuration changes in a wide range of screening parameters for clusters with particle numbers $N$ in the range of 11 to 60. We report three types of anomalous behaviors which are observed upon increase of screening, at fixed $N$ or for an increase of $N$ at fixed screening. The results are obtained by means of extensive first principle molecular dynamics simulations.

References in corpus (6)

• Crystallization in two-component Coulomb systems
• Classical and quantum Coulomb crystals
• Ground state of a confined Yukawa plasma
• Existence and Vanishing of the Breathing Mode in Strongly Correlated Finite Systems
• Ground state of a confined Yukawa plasma including correlation effects
• Crystallization in mass-asymmetric electron-hole bilayers

Cited by in corpus (1)

• Collective excitations of a spherically confined Yukawa plasma