Abstract
We have established the solid - fluid coexistence region for a system of polydisperse hard spheres with near-Gaussian diameter distributions, as a function of polydispersity. Significantly, we observe a `terminal' polydispersity above which there can be no fluid - solid coexistence. At the terminus the polydispersity is 5.7% for the solid and 11.8% for the fluid while the volume fractions are 0.588 and 0.547 for the solid and fluid respectively. Substantial fractionation observed at high values of the polydispersity (> 5%) implies that the `constrained eutectic' assumption made in previous theoretical studies is not generally valid. Our results for the terminal polydispersity are consistent with experiments performed on polydisperse colloidal suspensions.
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