Competition between Short-Ranged Attraction and Short-Ranged Repulsion in Crowded Configurational Space; A Lattice Model Description

TL;DR

This paper introduces a lattice Ising model that captures complex phase behaviors like gas, liquid, and crystal states, along with dynamical arrest, providing insights into how short-range attraction and repulsion influence crowded systems.

Contribution

It presents a simple lattice model that reproduces various phase behaviors and dynamical arrest phenomena, bridging the gap between continuum systems and lattice descriptions.

Findings

Model supports gas, liquid, and crystal phases

Phase behavior varies with parameter changes

Potential link between dynamical arrest and phase transitions

Abstract

We describe a simple nearest-neighbor Ising model that is capable of supporting a gas, liquid, crystal, in characteristic relationship to each other. As the parameters of the model are varied one obtains characteristic patterns of phase behavior reminiscent of continuum systems where the range of the interaction is varied. The model also possesses dynamical arrest, and although we have not studied it in detail, these 'transitions' appear to have a reasonable relationship to the phases and their transitions.