Separation and fractionation of order and disorder in highly polydisperse systems

Microcanonical Monte Carlo simulations of a polydisperse soft-spheres model for liquids and colloids have been performed for very large polydispersity, in the region where a phase-separation is known to occur when the system (or part of it) solidifies. By studying samples of different sizes, from N=256 to N=864, we focus on the nature of the two distinct coexisting phases. Measurements of crystalline order in particles of different size reveal that the solid phase segregates between a crystalline solid with cubic symmetry and a disordered phase. This phenomenon is termed fractionation.