Novel low-temperature behavior in classical many-particle systems

Robert D. Batten, Frank H. Stillinger, Salvatore Torquato

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

27 Scopus citations

Abstract

We show that classical many-particle systems interacting with certain soft pair interactions in two dimensions exhibit novel low-temperature behaviors. Ground states span from disordered to crystalline. At some densities, a large fraction of normal-mode frequencies vanish. Lattice ground-state configurations have more vanishing frequencies than disordered ground states at the same density and exhibit vanishing shear moduli. For the melting transition from a crystal, the thermal expansion coefficient is negative. These unusual results are attributed to the topography of the energy landscape.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Article number050602
JournalPhysical review letters
Volume103
Issue number5
DOIs
StatePublished - Aug 6 2009

All Science Journal Classification (ASJC) codes

  • General Physics and Astronomy

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