Dynamics of Confined Fluids close to Phase Transitions | Prof Sutapa Roy | Lecture 05
Email: [email protected]
Course Objective: Investigation of liquids under nano-confinement has drawn huge research attention in recent times. Physical properties of liquids confined in channels of a few nanometers in diameter can differ significantly from their behavior in the bulk. This effect is particularly strong close to the critical point of a second-order phase transition. While static properties are comparatively better studied, understanding dynamics in such situations is rather challenging and related attempts are recent. This course will cover a few aspects of dynamics of confined fluids. Particular focus will be on surface enrichment dynamics, wetting, interfaces, and critical Casimir forces.
A description of topics are:
Properties of fluids in contact with a surface are very different from those in the bulk. Surfaces break translational symmetry which can lead to unexpected equilibrium and out-of-equilibrium phenomena. In particular, phase transitions can be suppressed or altered in comparison to the bulk counterpart. The kind of thermodynamic singularities occurring in the surface layer of a confined fluid depends on the boundary conditions for the order parameter such that each
bulk universality class splits up into various surface universality classes.
In this direction, the following topics will be covered:
Concept of universality and second-order phase transition, surface universality classes, surface enrichment dynamics, wetting properties, critical Casimir forces.
A few exercises will be carried out to familiarise the participants to the computational methods of studying such phenomena.
References:
(1) H. W. Diehl, in Phase Transitions and Critical Phenomena, Vol. 8, edited by C. Domb and J. L. Lebowitz (Academic, London, 1983) p. 76.
(2) S. Dietrich, in Phase transitions and critical phenomena, Vol. 12, edited by C. Domb and J. Lebowitz (Academic, London, 1998) p. 1.
(3) D. Frenkel and B. Smit, Understanding Molecular Simulations: From Algorithm to Applications (Academic, San Diego, 2002).
(4) K. Binder and D. Heermann, in Monte Carlo Simulation in Statistical Physics (Springer, 2019).
(5) H. W. Diehl, International Journal of Modern Physics B 11, 3503 (1997).
Prerequisites:
Basic understanding of the concept of free energy, ensembles (Statistical Mechanics basic course).