Figure 1.

(a) Three limiting cases in a simple four-component system. “Condensation” refers to the coexistence of a single dense and single dilute phase. The relative populations of any two components are the same in both phases, although the absolute numbers vary considerably. “Partial demixing” refers to a subset of the components demixing to form homogenous droplets, while the other components remain soluble. “Full demixing” refers to all components undergoing demixing such that there are as many distinct homogenous droplets as there are components. (b) Two examples of random interaction matrices for 10-component systems (A–J) generated by selecting pairwise interactions from a Gaussian distribution with low variance (σ = 1) and high variance (σ = 5). The strength of the interaction between any two of the components is given at the corresponding intersection element on the matrix. For example, in the high variance table (σ = 5.0) (A) and (E) are strongly attractive, while (A) and (D) are strongly repulsive.