patrick.charbonneau@post.harvard.edu
Exquisite control over experimental conditions in colloidal
suspensions, whether inorganic or biological in nature, has
stimulated interest in basic physical models. Typical pairwise
interactions in these complex fluids, short-ranged depletion attraction
competing with screened charge repulsion, lead to non-trivial phenomenology,
for which theory and simulation offer insight.
We present an augmented version of the Gibbs ensemble Monte Carlo (GEMC)
method, which allows computation of the phase behavior
for model colloidal interactions.
The dynamics of nucleation and gel formation
from homogeneous phases is then related to these free energy
considerations. Path-dependent processes, such as
spinodal decomposition and microphase
formation, are identified as playing important
roles in the formation of clusters and
in the dynamical arrest of colloidal systems.
Lastly, we consider the stability of the gas-liquid critical point with
respect to crystallization, in the adhesive sphere (Baxter) limit.
To a first approximation, the solid coordination
number regulates the critical point metastability. Implications of this result for systems with
short-ranged attractive interactions are discussed.