TY - JOUR
T1 - Equilibrium configurations of hard spheres in a cylindrical harmonic potential
AU - Winkelmann, J.
AU - Mughal, Adil
AU - Weaire, D.
AU - Hutzler, S.
N1 - Funding Information:
We wish to thank S. Burke for help with the experimental set-up. This work was supported by: EPSRC grant Nos. EP/K032208/1 and EP/R014604/1, as well as an Irish Research Council Postgraduate Scholarship (project ID GOIPG/2015/1998). We also acknowledge the support of Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) under grant No. 13/IA/1926.
Publisher Copyright:
Copyright © 2019 EPLA.
PY - 2019/9/20
Y1 - 2019/9/20
N2 - A line of hard spheres confined by a transverse harmonic potential, with hard walls at its ends, exhibits a variety of buckled structures as it is compressed longitudinally. Here we show that these may be conveniently observed in a rotating liquid-filled tube (originally introduced by Lee et al. (Adv. Mater., 29 (2017) 1704274) to assemble ordered three-dimensional structures at higher compressions). The corresponding theoretical model is transparent and easily investigated numerically, as well as by analytic approximations. Hence we explore a wide range of predicted structures occurring via bifurcation, of which the stable ones are also observed in our experiments. Qualitatively similar structures have previously been found in trapped ion systems.
AB - A line of hard spheres confined by a transverse harmonic potential, with hard walls at its ends, exhibits a variety of buckled structures as it is compressed longitudinally. Here we show that these may be conveniently observed in a rotating liquid-filled tube (originally introduced by Lee et al. (Adv. Mater., 29 (2017) 1704274) to assemble ordered three-dimensional structures at higher compressions). The corresponding theoretical model is transparent and easily investigated numerically, as well as by analytic approximations. Hence we explore a wide range of predicted structures occurring via bifurcation, of which the stable ones are also observed in our experiments. Qualitatively similar structures have previously been found in trapped ion systems.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85075022187&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1209/0295-5075/127/44002
DO - 10.1209/0295-5075/127/44002
M3 - Article
SN - 0295-5075
VL - 127
JO - EPL
JF - EPL
IS - 4
M1 - 44002
ER -
