Fluid-fluid transitions of hard spheres with a very-short-range attraction
Hard spheres with an attraction of range a tenth to a hundredth of the sphere diameter are constrained to remain fluid even at densities when monodisperse particles at equilibrium would have crystallized, in order to compare with experimental systems that remain fluid. They are found to have a fluid-fluid transition at high density. As the range of the attraction tends to zero, the density at the critical point tends toward the random-close-packing density of hard spheres.
Sear
RP
Department of Physics, University of Surrey, Guildford, United Kingdom. r.sear@surrey.ac.uk