Study of Transient Nuclei near Freezing

Abstract

The molasses tail in dense hard core fluids is investigated by extensive event-driven molecular dynamics simulation through the orientational autocorrelation functions. Near the fluid-solid phase transition, there exist three regimes in the relaxation of the pair orientational autocorrelation function, namely the kinetic, molasses (stretched exponential), and diffusional power decay. The density dependence of both the molasses and diffusional power regimes are evaluated and the latter compares with theoretical predictions in three dimensions. The largest cluster at the freezing density of only a few sphere diameter in size persist for only about 30 picoseconds (~ 2.8 x 10^{-11}[s]). The most striking observation through the bond orientatinal order parameter is the dramatic increase of the cluster size as the freezing density is approached.

12 pages, 8 figures, 3 tables, To appear in the Proceedings of YKIS2009 Frontiers in Nonequilibrium Physics, Progress of Theoretical Physics Supplement (2010).

Cited by in corpus (4)

• Nature of Intrinsic Uncertainties in Equilibrium Molecular Dynamics Estimation of Shear Viscosity for Simple and Complex Fluids
• Density-Dependent Finite System-Size Effects in Equilibrium Molecular Dynamics Estimation of Shear Viscosity: Hydrodynamic and Configurational Study
• Generalized Bond Order Parameters to Characterize Transient Crystals
• Nature of self-diffusion in two-dimensional fluids