Dr. Anthony Haymet is supported by a grant from The Theoretical and Computational Chemistry Program to develop new statistical mechanical theories which can be applied to the freezing of liquids including those which exhibit significant quantum effects at low temperatures. This research will provide a deeper understanding of the important natural phenomena associated with liquid to solid phase changes and superfluidity. Haymet will extend the current density functional theories of freezing, which he has been instrumental in developing, by combining them with modern quantum path integral techniques so that he can treat freezing of quantum liquids and liquid mixtures. In his preliminary calculations on helium-4 he has discovered a self correlation effect which drives the quantum freezing process, and which has no counterpart in classical fluids. In essence it is the "quantum swelling" which is responsible for the non-classical behavior.
