Identity crises in hard polyhedral glass-formers

Colloidal systems are capable of self-assembling into a wide variety of ordered structures, ranging from the simple to the exceedingly complex. Often, however, no such assembly occurs, and the system instead displays dynamical characteristics of glass-formation. Here, we computationally investigate assembly failure in a family of monodisperse, one-component systems, composed of colloidal particles of polyhedral shapes with no interactions aside from those of excluded volume. We study the role that local structure plays in dynamical arrest in these entropic systems, and find that assembly failure arises from an ``identity crisis” experienced on a local level and manifested in shape space.