PHASE TRANSITIONS AND QUANTUM EFFECTS IN MODEL COLLOIDS AND NANOSTRUCTURES

Hard and soft disks in external periodic (light-) fields show rich phase diagrams including freezing and melting transitions when the density of the system is varied. Monte Carlo simulations for detailed finite-size scaling analysis of various thermodynamic quantities like the order parameter, its cumulants, etc. have been used in order to map the phase diagram of the system for various values of the density and the amplitude of the external potential. Interpreting hard disks as the simplest model of an atomic fluid, quantum effects on the phase diagram are investigated by path integral Monte Carlo simulations.