A new Monte Carlo method to study the fluid-solid phase transition of polydisperse hard spheres

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel Monte Carlo method using an extended ensemble to accurately determine the fluid-solid phase transition points in polydisperse hard sphere systems, validated by simulations matching previous findings.

Contribution

The paper presents a new Monte Carlo approach that links monodisperse and polydisperse systems to find phase transition points more efficiently.

Findings

Method accurately predicts fluid-solid coexistence in polydisperse spheres.

Simulation results agree with previous studies.

Approach simplifies studying phase transitions in complex systems.

Abstract

A new Monte Carlo approach is proposed to investigate the fluid-solid phase transition of the polydisperse system. By using the extended ensemble, a reversible path was constructed to link the monodisperse and corresponding polydisperse system. Once the fluid-solid coexistence point of the monodisperse system is known, the fluid-solid coexistence point of the polydisperse system can be obtained from the simulation. The validity of the method is checked by the simulation of the fluid-solid phase transition of a size-polydisperse hard sphere colloid. The results are in agreement with the previous studies.