Abstract
Colloids are mixtures of two different types of molecules. It is believed that colloids undergo a phase transition whereby at low density the two types of molecules will be uniformly interspersed, while at high density large clusters will form and the two types of molecules will effectively separate. The authors study the DK algorithm on a colloid model consisting of long bars and small diamonds on the periodic lattice ... They show that if they restrict the model to allow at most one bar in each column of the lattice region, then local algorithms are slow, but the DK algorithm is provably efficient (if the bars are long enough). However, the authors show that when they allow any number of bars per column, the DK algorithm also requires exponential time to reach equilibrium. (ProQuest: ... denotes formulae/symbols omitted.)