Unconventional rheological properties in systems of deformable particles.

We demonstrate the existence of unconventional rheological and memory properties in systems of soft-deformable particles whose energy depends on their shape, via numerical simulations. At large strains, these systems experience an unconventional shear weakening transition characterized by an increase in the mechanical energy and a drastic drop in shear stress, which stems from the emergence of short-ranged tetratic order. In these weakened states, the contact network evolves reversibly under strain reversal, keeping memory of its initial state, while the microscopic dynamics is irreversible.

Hidden Order Beyond Hyperuniformity in Critical Absorbing States.

Disordered hyperuniformity is a description of hidden correlations in point distributions revealed by an anomalous suppression in fluctuations of local density at various coarse-graining length scales. In the absorbing phase of models exhibiting an active-absorbing state transition, this suppression extends up to a hyperuniform length scale that diverges at the critical point. Here, we demonstrate the existence of additional many-body correlations beyond hyperuniformity.

Mechanical disorder of sticky-sphere glasses. I. Effect of attractive interactions.

Recent literature indicates that attractive interactions between particles of a dense liquid play a secondary role in determining its bulk mechanical properties. Here we show that, in contrast with their apparent unimportance to the bulk mechanics of dense liquids, attractive interactions can have a major effect on macro- and microscopic elastic properties of glassy solids. We study several broadly applicable dimensionless measures of stability and mechanical disorder in simple computer glasses, in which the relative strength of attractive interactions-referred to as "glass stickiness"-can be readily tuned.

Mechanical disorder of sticky-sphere glasses. II. Thermomechanical inannealability.

Many structural glasses feature static and dynamic mechanical properties that can depend strongly on glass formation history. The degree of universality of this history dependence and what it is possibly affected by are largely unexplored. Here we show that the variability of elastic properties of simple computer glasses under thermal annealing depends strongly on the strength of attractive interactions between the glasses' constituent particles-referred to here as glass "stickiness.

Delayed Thiol-Epoxy Photopolymerization: A General and Effective Strategy to Prepare Thick Composites.

Photoinduced thiol-epoxy click polymerization possesses both the characteristics and advantages of photopolymerization and click reactions. However, the photopolymerization of pigmented or highly filled thiol-epoxy thick composites still remains a great challenge due to the light screening effect derived from the competitive absorption, reflection, and scattering of the pigments or functional fillers. In this article, we present a simple and versatile strategy to prepare thick composites via delayed thiol-epoxy photopolymerization.

Hyperuniformity and density fluctuations at a rigidity transition in a model of biological tissues.

The suppression of density fluctuations at different length scales is the hallmark of hyperuniformity. Here, we explore the presence of this hidden order in a manybody interacting model of biological tissue, known to exhibit a transition, or sharp crossover, from a solid to a fluid like phase. We show that the density fluctuations in the rigid phase are only suppressed up to a finite lengthscale.

Occurrence of discontinuities in the performance of finite-time quantum Otto cycles.

We study a quantum Otto cycle in which the strokes are performed in finite time. The cycle involves energy measurements at the end of each stroke to allow for the respective determination of work. We then optimize for the work and efficiency of the cycle by varying the time spent in the different strokes and find that the optimal value of the ratio of time spent on each stroke goes through sudden changes as the parameters of this cycle vary continuously.

Quantum statistics and the performance of engine cycles.

We study the role of quantum statistics in the performance of Otto cycles. First, we show analytically that the work distributions for bosonic and fermionic working fluids are identical for cycles driven by harmonic trapping potentials. Subsequently, in the case of nonharmonic potentials, we find that the interplay between different energy level spacings and particle statistics strongly affects the performances of the engine cycle.

Work and efficiency of quantum Otto cycles in power-law trapping potentials.

We study the performance of a quantum Otto cycle operating in trapping potentials of different shapes. We show that, while both the mean work output and the efficiency of two Otto cycles in different trapping potentials can be made equal, the work probability distribution will still be strongly affected by the difference in structure of the energy levels. To exemplify our results, we study the family of potentials of the form V(t)(x) ∼ x(2q).