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Abstract:

The Casimir-Lifshitz interaction between metamaterials is studied using a model that takes into account the structural heterogeneity of the dielectric and magnetic properties of the bodies. A recently developed perturbation theory for the Casimir-Lifshitz interaction between arbitrary material bodies is generalized to include non-uniform magnetic permeability profiles, and used to study the interaction between the magneto-dielectric heterostructures within the leading order. The metamaterials are modeled as two dimensional arrays of domains with varying permittivity and permeability. In the case of two semi-infinite bodies with flat boundaries, the patterned structure of the material properties is found to cause the normal Casimir-Lifshitz force to develop an oscillatory behavior when the distance between the two bodies is comparable to the wavelength of the patterned features in the metamaterials. The non-uniformity also leads to the emergence of lateral Casimir-Lifshitz forces, which tend to strengthen as the gap size becomes smaller. Our results suggest that the recent studies on Casimir-Lifshitz forces between metamaterials, which have been performed with the aim of examining the possibility of observing the repulsive force, should be revisited to include the effect of the patterned structure at the wavelength of several hundred nanometers that coincides with the relevant gap size in the experiments.

Abstract:

The phase diagram of model anisotropic particles with four attractive patches in a tetrahedral arrangement has been computed at two different values for the range of the potential, with the aim of investigating the conditions under which a diamond crystal can be formed. We find that the diamond phase is never stable for our longer-ranged potential. At low temperatures and pressures, the fluid freezes into a body-centred-cubic solid that can be viewed as two interpenetrating diamond lattices with a weak interaction between the two sublattices. Upon compression, an orientationally ordered face-centred-cubic crystal becomes more stable than the body-centred-cubic crystal, and at higher temperatures a plastic face-centered-cubic phase is stabilized by the increased entropy due to orientational disorder. A similar phase diagram is found for the shorter-ranged potential, but at low temperatures and pressures, we also find a region over which the diamond phase is thermodynamically favored over the body-centred-cubic phase. The higher vibrational entropy of the diamond structure with respect to the body-centred-cubic solid explains why it is stable even though the enthalpy of the latter phase is lower. Some preliminary studies on the growth of the diamond structure starting from a crystal seed were performed. Even though the diamond phase is never thermodynamically stable for the longer-ranged model, direct coexistence simulations of the interface between the fluid and the body-centred-cubic crystal and between the fluid and the diamond crystal show that, at sufficiently low pressures, it is quite probable that in both cases the solid grows into a diamond crystal, albeit involving some defects. These results highlight the importance of kinetic effects in the formation of diamond crystals in systems of patchy particles.