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Abstract

Spatial confinement is known to induce a dramatic change in the viscosity and relaxation time of liquids near the glass transition point (see, e.g., the topical review in [1] and references therein). While this issue has been the subject of a large number of studies for polymers and molecular glasses, only few investigations focus on colloidal hard sphere systems [2]. Quite recently, computer simulation studies of a monodisperse hard sphere (HS) system revealed an oscillatory behavior of the diffusion coefficient as the wall-to-wall distance, H, was varied between 2 and 4 particle diameters [3]. Suppressing crystallization via polydispersity, we extend these studies to considerably higher volume fractions, thereby addressing, for the first time in simulations, the effect of confinement on the mode coupling critical volume fraction, phi_c. Our results are in good agreement with recent theoretical predictions [4]. A thorough test of other aspects of theoretical predictions is also provided [5]. 

References:
[1] J. Baschnagel, F. Varnik, J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 17, R851-R953 (2005). 
[2] C. R. Nugent et al. PRL 99, 025702 (2007). 
[3] J. Mittal et al. PRL 100, 145901 (2008). 
[4] S. Lang et al. PRL 105, 125701 (2010). 
[5] S. Mandal, S. Lang, R. Schilling, M. Oettel, D. Raabe, T. Franosch, F. Varnik, under review.