Melting Colloidal Crystals from the Inside Out

摘要

Consider an ice cube melting in a glass of water. Ice cubes and any other solid objects almost always melt from their outer surface inward, and this scenario is well understood by physicists. What is less common, less well understood, but more intriguing is the case when a solid melts from inside outward (see the figure, panel A). Experimentally, this might be achieved by focusing an intense laser pulse inside a solid sample to locally superheat it.