Polydispersity effect on solid-fluid transition in hard sphere systems

The solid-fluid transition of the hard elastic particle system with size polydispersity is studied by molecular dynamics simulations. Using nonequilibrium relaxation from the mixed initial condition we determines the melting point where the first order transition between the solid, fcc crystal, and fluid states occurs. It is found that the density gap between the bistable states decreases with increasing the strength of the polydispersity and continuously approaches to zero at the critical point.