Melting of trapped few particle systems

TL;DR

This paper introduces a simple method based on the variance of block-averaged interparticle distance fluctuations to more reliably determine melting points in small confined systems, addressing ambiguities in previous approaches.

Contribution

It proposes a new, straightforward quantity for analyzing melting in small systems, improving consistency over existing methods.

Findings

The new quantity reduces ambiguity in melting point determination.

It provides consistent results across different measurement approaches.

The method is simple and effective for small confined particle systems.

Abstract

In small confined systems predictions for the melting point strongly depend on the choice of quantity and on the way it is computed, even yielding divergent and ambiguous results. We present a very simple quantity which allows to control these problems -- the variance of the block averaged interparticle distance fluctuations.