Demixing transition, structure, and depletion forces in binary mixtures of hard-spheres: the role of bridge functions.

Asymmetric binary mixtures of hard-spheres exhibit several interesting thermodynamic phenomena, such as multiple kinds of glassy states. When the degrees of freedom of the small spheres are integrated out from the description, their effects are incorporated into an effective pair interaction between large spheres known as the depletion potential. The latter has been widely used to study both the phase behavior and dynamic arrest of the big particles.