Communication: Re-entrant limits of stability of the liquid phase and the Speedy scenario in colloidal model systems

A re-entrant gas-liquid spinodal was proposed as a possible explanation\udof the apparent divergence of the compressibility and specific heat off\udsupercooling water. Such a counter-intuitive possibility, e.g., a liquid\udthat becomes unstable to gas-like fluctuations on cooling at positive\udpressure, has never been observed, neither in real substances nor in\udoff-lattice simulations. More recently, such a reentrant scenario has\udbeen dismissed on the premise that the re-entrant spinodal would collide\udwith the gas-liquid coexisting curve (binodal) in the\udpressure-temperature plane. Here we study, numerically and analytically,\udtwo previously introduced one-component patchy particle models that both\udshow (i) a re-entrant limit of stability of the liquid phase and (ii) a\udre-entrant binodal, providing a neat in silico (and in charta)\udrealization of such unconventional thermodynamic scenario. Published by\udAIP Publishing