Diverging time scale in the dimensional crossover for liquids in strong confinement

Abstract

We study a strongly interacting dense hard-sphere system confined between two parallel plates by event-driven molecular dynamics simulations to address the fundamental question of the nature of the 3D to 2D crossover. As the fluid becomes more and more confined the dynamics of the transverse and lateral degrees of freedom decouple, which is accompanied by a diverging time scale separating 2D from 3D behavior. Relying on the time-correlation function of the transversal kinetic energy the scaling behavior and its density-dependence is explored. Surprisingly, our simulations reveal that its time-dependence becomes purely exponential such that memory effects can be ignored. We rationalize our findings quantitatively in terms of an analytic theory which becomes exact in the limit of strong confinement.

11 pages, Physical Review Letters, includes Supplemental Material

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Cited by in corpus (8)

• Nonergodicity parameters of confined hard-sphere glasses
• Mode-coupling theory of the glass transition for colloidal liquids in slit geometry
• Static properties of quasi-confined hard-sphere fluids
• Dynamical properties of densely packed confined hard-sphere fluids
• Structural properties of liquids in extreme confinement
• Dynamic properties of quasi-confined colloidal hard-sphere liquids near the glass transition
• Long-wavelength fluctuations and dimensionality crossover in confined liquids
• Inhomogeneous Diffusion in Confined Colloidal Suspensions