Role of defects on Coulomb crystal and its melting

Seth, Swarnadeep (2018) Role of defects on Coulomb crystal and its melting. Masters thesis, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Kolkata.

PDF (MS dissertation of Swarnadeep Seth (13MS054)) 13MS054.pdf - Submitted Version Restricted to Repository staff only Download (7MB)

Abstract

The melting in two dimensions has attracted the attention of many physicists over the last few decades. Physicists from both theoretical and experimental background have suggested various analytic theories and conducted numerous experiments to understand the nature of this melting transition. In this thesis, we have classically simulated bulk Coulomb crystal system and reported that melting happens in two stages i.e. solid to hexatic and hexatic to the liquid phase transition, which was also a prediction of KTHNY theory. We have introduced pinning disorder into the triangular lattice system and shown that for pinning the disorder at random sites helps to melt the system at a relatively low temperature. On the other hand, pinning disorder at crystal sites favors the hexagonal crystal phase. We have compared the bulk system with random pinning disorder against the confined system under the irregular trap to show the melting transition for both these cases is quite similar.

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