Liquid crystals exhibit orientation-dependent phases ranging from a disordered ~isotropic! phase to a highly ordered crystalline phase. In between these extremes, increasing order can result in nematic and smectic phases. Typically, molecular simulation studies of liquid-crystal behavior use a nonspherical hard-body monomer. In this work, molecular simulation is used to study dimers of hard pro...

The phase transition from an isotropic to a nematic phase for a classical uid of hard ellipsoids has been studied using a version of a theory originally due to Onsager and by computer simulation. In the proposed form of the Onsager theory for the Helmholtz free energy, both the second and the third virial coeecients are treated exactly, but the fourth and higher virials are resummed in a manner...

Using results from colloid science we derive interaction potentials for computer simulations of mixtures of soft or hard ellipsoids of arbitrary shape and size. Our results are in many respects reminicent of potentials of the Gay-Berne type but have a well-defined microscopic interpretation and no adjustable parameters. Since our potentials require the calculation of similar variables, the modi...

We have carried out computer simulations of overcompressed suspensions of hard monodisperse ellipsoids and observed their crystallization dynamics. The system was compressed very rapidly in order to reach the regime of slow, glass-like dynamics. We find that, although particle dynamics become sub-diffusive and the intermediate scattering function clearly develops a shoulder, crystallization pro...

We study the formation and dynamics of dipolar rings composed by microscopic ferromagnetic ellipsoids, which self-assemble in water by switching the direction of the applied field. We show how to manipulate these fragile structures and control their shape via application of external static and oscillating magnetic fields. We introduce a theoretical framework which describes the ring deformation...

In this work, the well-known Frenkel-Mulder phase diagram of hard ellipsoids of revolution [D. Frenkel and B. M. Mulder, Mol. Phys. 55, 1171 (1985)] is revisited by means of replica exchange Monte Carlo simulations. The method provides good sampling of dense systems and so, solid phases can be accessed without the need of imposing a given structure. At high densities, we found plastic solids an...

We present a computer simulation study of the crystalline phases of hard ellipsoids of revolution. A previous study [P. Pfleiderer and T. Schilling, Phys. Rev. E 75, 020402 (2007)]. showed that for aspect ratios a/b>or=3 the previously suggested stretched-fcc phase [D. Frenkel and B. Mulder, Mol. Phys. 55, 1171 (1985)] is unstable with respect to a simple monoclinic phase with two ellipsoids of...