Hysteresis and re-entrant melting of a self-organized system of classical particles confined in a parabolic trap

TL;DR

This study investigates how competing short-range attraction and long-range repulsion influence the melting behavior of a self-organized classical particle system in a trap, revealing re-entrant melting, hysteresis, and phase transitions.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the effects of potential competition on melting and structural transitions in confined classical particle systems.

Findings

Re-entrant melting behavior observed under certain conditions.

Hysteresis effects linked to potential barriers between configurations.

Melting temperature varies with screening length and attraction strength.

Abstract

A self-organized system composed of classical particles confined in a two-dimensional parabolic trap and interacting through a potential with a short-range attractive part and long-range repulsive part is studied as function of temperature. The influence of the competition between the short-range attractive part of the inter-particle potential and its long-range repulsive part on the melting temperature is studied. Different behaviors of the melting temperature are found depending on the screening length ($\kappa$) and the strength ($B$) of the attractive part of the inter-particle potential. A re-entrant behavior and a thermal induced phase transition is observed in a small region of ($\kappa,B$)-space. A structural hysteresis effect is observed as a function of temperature and physically understood as due to the presence of a potential barrier between different configurations of the system.