Long-wavelength fluctuations and dimensionality crossover in confined liquids

Jing Yang, Yan Wei Li, Massimo Pica Ciamarra*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

3 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

The phase behavior of liquids confined in a slit geometry does not reveal a crossover from a three- to a two-dimensional behavior as the gap size decreases. Indeed, the prototypical two-dimensional hexatic phase only occurs in liquids confined to a monolayer. Here, we demonstrate that the dimensionality crossover is apparent in the lateral size dependence of the relaxation dynamics of confined liquids, developing a Debye model for the density of vibrational states of confined systems and performing extensive numerical simulations. In confined systems, Mermin-Wagner fluctuations enhance the amplitude of vibrational motion - or the Debye-Waller factor - by a quantity scaling as the inverse gap width and proportional to the logarithm of the aspect ratio, as a clear signature of a two-dimensional behavior. As the temperature or lateral system size increases, the crossover to a size-independent relaxation dynamics occurs when structural relaxation takes place before the vibrational modes with the longest wavelength develop.

Original languageEnglish
Article number033172
JournalPhysical Review Research
Volume3
Issue number3
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Sept 2021
Externally publishedYes

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