title: Crystal phases of soft spheres systems in a slab geometry.
abstract: We have identified the ground state configurations of soft particles (interacting via inverse power potentials) confined between two hard, impenetrable walls. To this end we have used a highly reliable optimization scheme at vanishing temperature while varying the wall separation over a representative range. Apart from the expected layered triangular and square structures (which are compatible with the three-dimensional bulk fcc lattice), we have identified a cascade of highly complex intermediate structures. Taking benefit of the general scaling properties of inverse power potentials, we could identify - for a given softness value - one single master curve which relates the energy to the wall separation, irrespective of the density of the system. Via extensive Monte Carlo simulations, we have performed closer investigations of these intermediate structures at finite temperature: we could provide evidence to which extent these particle arrangements remain stable over a relatively large temperature range.
authors: Institut für Theoretische Physik and Center for Computational Materials Science (CMS), Technische Universität Wien, Wiedner Hauptstraße 8-10, A-1040 Wien, Austria.
authors: Moritz
authors: M
authors: Antlanger
authors: Institut für Theoretische Physik and Center for Computational Materials Science (CMS), Technische Universität Wien, Wiedner Hauptstraße 8-10, A-1040 Wien, Austria.
authors: Günther
authors: G
authors: Doppelbauer
authors: Laboratoire de Physique Théorique (UMR 8627), Université de Paris-Sud and CNRS, Bâtiment 210, F-91405 Orsay Cedex, France.
authors: Martial
authors: M
authors: Mazars
authors: Institut für Theoretische Physik and Center for Computational Materials Science (CMS), Technische Universität Wien, Wiedner Hauptstraße 8-10, A-1040 Wien, Austria.
authors: Gerhard
authors: G
authors: Kahl