Critical point for demixing of binary hard spheres.

Abstract

We use a two-level simulation method to analyze the critical point associated with demixing of binary hard-sphere mixtures. The method exploits an accurate coarse-grained model with two- and three-body effective interactions. Using this model within the two-level methodology allows computation of properties of the full (fine-grained) mixture. The critical point is located by computing the probability distribution for the number of large particles in the grand canonical ensemble and matching to the universal form for the 3D Ising universality class. The results have a strong and unexpected dependence on the size ratio between large and small particles, which is related to three-body effective interactions and the geometry of the underlying hard-sphere packings.