Spatially Localized Quasicrystals

Abstract

We investigate quasicrystal-forming soft matter using a two-scale phase field crystal model. At state points near thermodynamic coexistence between bulk quasicrystals and the liquid phase, we find multiple metastable spatially localized quasicrystals embedded in a background of liquid. In three dimensions we obtain spatially localized icosahedral quasicrystals. In two dimensions, we compute several families of spatially localized quasicrystals with dodecagonal structure and investigate their properties as a function of the system parameters. In both cases the localized quasicrystals are metastable, and so correspond to energetically locally favored structures. The presence of such structures is expected to crucially affect the dynamics of the crystallization process.

5 pages, 5 figures, 1 page PDF supplement and 1 MP4 video

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Cited by in corpus (14)

• Classical dynamical density functional theory: from fundamentals to applications
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• Which wavenumbers determine the thermodynamic stability of soft matter quasicrystals?
• Spatiotemporal chaos and quasipatterns in coupled reaction-diffusion systems
• Localized patterns in planar bistable weakly coupled lattice systems
• Snakes in square, honeycomb, and triangular lattices
• Isolas of multi-pulse solutions to lattice dynamical systems
• Localised patterns in a generalised Swift--Hohenberg equation with a quartic marginal stability curve
• Microscopic Patterns in the 2D Phase-Field-Crystal Model
• Exploring Critical Points of Energy Landscapes: From Low-Dimensional Examples to Phase Field Crystal PDEs
• Defects Enhance Stability in 12-fold Symmetric Soft-Matter Quasicrystals
• Snaking without subcriticality: grain boundaries as non-topological defects
• Motility-induced crystallization and rotating crystallites
• Approximate localised dihedral patterns near a Turing instability