Aging in short-ranged attractive colloids: A numerical study

TL;DR

This study investigates aging dynamics in dense colloidal suspensions with short-range attractions, revealing distinct aging behaviors in attractive and repulsive glasses through numerical simulations.

Contribution

It provides a comparative analysis of aging in attractive and repulsive glasses within the same model, highlighting novel aging features in the attractive glass.

Findings

Aging in repulsive glass resembles atomic systems

Attractive glass exhibits unexpected aging behaviors

Two distinct glasses coexist at the same packing fraction

Abstract

We study the aging dynamics in a model for dense simple liquids, in which particles interact through a hard-core repulsion complemented by a short-ranged attractive potential, of the kind found in colloidal suspensions. In this system, at large packing fractions, kinetically arrested disordered states can be created both on cooling (attractive glass) and on heating (repulsive glass). The possibility of having two distinct glasses, at the same packing fraction, with two different dynamics offers the unique possibility of comparing -- within the same model -- the differences in aging dynamics. We find that, while the aging dynamics of the repulsive glass is similar to the one observed in atomic and molecular systems, the aging dynamics of the attractive glass shows novel unexpected features.