Molecular dynamics simulations of colloids: Supercooled Yukawa systems

Abstract

We performed molecular dynamics simulations on one and two component Yukawa systems. Cooling the system down and inspecting pair distribution functions (pdf) and bond correlation functions (bcf) we found the one component system to crystallize into a bcc-like lattice rather than an fcc lattice which is the stable phase of the simulated system at low temperatures. Upon cooling the two component system freezes into a glassy state without exhibiting crystalline structure in pdf or bcf. We define particle excess functions which show that spacial fluctuations in the number density of particles of the different components decay quite slowly. Therefore we believe that a well defined state of the two component system can only be reached in simulations long enough to allow those fluctuations to decay.