Two-Dimensional Melting of Colloidal Hard Spheres
Alice L Thorneywork, Joshua L Abbott, Dirk G A L Aarts, and Roel P A Dullens
Phys. Rev. Lett. 2017 118 158001
We study the melting of quasi-two-dimensional colloidal hard spheres by considering a tilted monolayer of particles in sedimentation-diffusion equilibrium. In particular, we measure the equation of state from the density profiles and use time-dependent and height-resolved correlation functions to identify the liquid, hexatic, and crystal phases. We find that the liquid-hexatic transition is first order and that the hexatic-crystal transition is continuous. Furthermore, we directly measure the width of the liquid-hexatic coexistence gap from the fluctuations of the corresponding interface, and thereby experimentally establish the full phase behavior of hard disks.