About this Abstract |
| Meeting |
2025 TMS Annual Meeting & Exhibition
|
| Symposium
|
Computational Thermodynamics and Kinetics
|
| Presentation Title |
Topology of a Phase Transition |
| Author(s) |
Jeremy K. Mason, Ozan B Ericok |
| On-Site Speaker (Planned) |
Jeremy K. Mason |
| Abstract Scope |
Phase transitions are part of our everyday experience and yet continue to resist satisfactory theoretical explanation. How can the definition of a phase be made more precise and the presence or absence of a phase transition be understood? This question is approached by considering a simplified system where molecules are modeled as hard disks. More specifically, consider the hard disk configuration space as a function of the number of disks and the available volume. Critical points are defined as configurations with a mechanically-balanced contact graph, and are associated with a topological change in the accessible region of the configuration space. The accumulation of such critical configurations around the packing fraction of the solid-liquid phase transition increases exponentially with the number of disks, suggesting that the onset of the first-order phase transition in the thermodynamic limit is related to (and perhaps driven by) a topological catastrophe. |
| Proceedings Inclusion? |
Planned: |
| Keywords |
Modeling and Simulation, Phase Transformations, |