Scaling of dynamics with the range of interaction in short-range attractive colloids

Abstract

We numerically study the dependence of the dynamics on the range of interaction $Δ$ for the short-range square well potential. We find that, for small $Δ$, dynamics scale exactly in the same way as thermodynamics, both for Newtonian and Brownian microscopic dynamics. For interaction ranges from a few percent down to the Baxter limit, the relative location of the attractive glass line and the liquid-gas line does not depend on $Δ$. This proves that in this class of potentials, disordered arrested states (gels) can be generated only as a result of a kinetically arrested phase separation.