The hexatic fluid refers to a phase in between a solid and a liquid that has short-range positional order but quasi-long-range orientational order. In the celebrated theory of Berezinskii, Kosterlitz, and Thouless and subsequently refined by Halperin, Nelson, and Young, it was predicted that a two-dimensional hexagonal solid can melt in two steps: first, through a transformation from a solid to a hexatic fluid, which retains quasi-long-range orientational order; and then from a hexatic fluid to an isotropic liquid. In this Letter, using a combination of real space imaging and transport measurements, we show that the two-dimensional vortex lattice in an a-MoGe thin film follows this sequence of melting as the magnetic field is increased. Identifying the signatures of various transitions on the bulk transport properties of the superconductor, we construct a vortex phase diagram for a two-dimensional superconductor.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
|---|---|
| http://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.122.047001 | DOI Listing |
Publication Analysis
Top Keywords
Similar Publications
Hole statistics of equilibrium 2D and 3D hard-sphere crystals.
J Chem Phys
August 2024
Department of Chemistry, Department of Physics, Princeton Institute of Materials, and Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.
The probability of finding a spherical "hole" of a given radius r contains crucial structural information about many-body systems. Such hole statistics, including the void conditional nearest-neighbor probability functions GV(r), have been well studied for hard-sphere fluids in d-dimensional Euclidean space Rd. However, little is known about these functions for hard-sphere crystals for values of r beyond the hard-sphere diameter, as large holes are extremely rare in crystal phases.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCell Division and Motility Enable Hexatic Order in Biological Tissues.
Phys Rev Lett
May 2024
Department of Physics, Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts 02115, USA.
Biological tissues transform between solid- and liquidlike states in many fundamental physiological events. Recent experimental observations further suggest that in two-dimensional epithelial tissues these solid-liquid transformations can happen via intermediate states akin to the intermediate hexatic phases observed in equilibrium two-dimensional melting. The hexatic phase is characterized by quasi-long-range (power-law) orientational order but no translational order, thus endowing some structure to an otherwise structureless fluid.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPossibilities and limitations of convolutional neural network machine learning architectures in the characterisation of achiral orthogonal smectic liquid crystals.
Soft Matter
May 2024
Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Manchester, Oxford Road, Manchester M139PL, UK.
Machine learning is becoming a valuable tool in the characterisation and property prediction of liquid crystals. It is thus worthwhile to be aware of the possibilities but also the limitations of current machine learning algorithms. In this study we investigated a phase sequence of isotropic - fluid smecticA - hexatic smectic B - soft crystal CrE - crystalline.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPhase Coexistence and Edge Currents in the Chiral Lennard-Jones Fluid.
Phys Rev Lett
April 2024
Departament de Física de la Matèria Condensada, Universitat de Barcelona C. Martí Franquès, 1 08028 Barcelona Spain.
We study a model chiral fluid in two dimensions composed of Brownian disks interacting via a Lennard-Jones potential and a nonconservative transverse force, mimicking colloids spinning at a given rate. The system exhibits a phase separation between a chiral liquid and a dilute gas phase that can be characterized using a thermodynamic framework. We compute the equations of state and show that the surface tension controls interface corrections to the coexisting pressure predicted from the equal-area construction.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFTopological phases in nanoparticle monolayers: can crystalline, hexatic, and isotropic-fluid phases coexist in the same monolayer?
Soft Matter
October 2023
Physical and Material Chemistry Division, National Chemical Laboratory, Pune 411008, India.
Topological phases are stable configurations of matter in 2-dimensions (2D) formed spontaneous symmetry breaking. These play a crucial role in determining the system properties. Though a number of fundamental studies on topological phase transitions and topological defect dynamics have been conducted with model colloidal systems (typically microns in size), the same is lacking on nanoparticle monolayers (NPMLs, typically made of ligand-coated sub-ten nanometer particles).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFWant AI Summaries of new PubMed Abstracts delivered to your In-box?
Enter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!