Abstract
Motivated by recent experimental and simulation results reporting on the use of rare gas pre-plated nanoporous materials to explore one dimensional superfluidity, we describe an approach towards constructing a microscopically accurate description of the confinement potential in these systems. By combining grand canonical Monte Carlo adsorption isotherms with molecular dynamics simulations and experimental results, we can resolve atomic-scale detail of the energetic environment inside MCM-41 crystals. The results support a previous conjecture that the adsorption of a rare gas monolayer can screen imperfections and roughness near the pore walls and yield a smooth confinement potential that can be incorporated into more costly quantum simulations of low-dimensional superfluids.
Nathan Nichols
Graduate Student in Materials Science
My research interests include low dimensional exotic phases of matter, quantum Monte Carlo algorithmic development, and machine learning for the quantum many-body problem.