Calculus of Variations and Geometric Measure Theory

M. Cicalese - L. Kreutz - G. P. Leonardi

Emergence of Wulff-Crystals from atomistic systems on the FCC and HCP lattices

created by kreutz on 27 Apr 2022
modified by cicalese on 16 Sep 2023

[BibTeX]

Published Paper

Inserted: 27 apr 2022
Last Updated: 16 sep 2023

Journal: Comm. Math. Phys.
Volume: 402
Number: 3
Pages: 2931–2978
Year: 2023

Abstract:

We consider a system of $N$ hard spheres sitting on the nodes of either the $\mathrm{FCC}$ or $\mathrm{HCP}$ lattice and interacting via a sticky-disk potential. As $N$ tends to infinity (continuum limit), assuming the interaction energy does not exceed that of the ground-state by more than $N^{2/3}$ (surface scaling), we obtain the variational coarse grained model by $\Gamma$-convergence. More precisely, we prove that the continuum limit energies are of perimeter type and we compute explicitly their Wulff shapes. Our analysis shows that crystallization on $\mathrm{FCC}$ is preferred to that on $\mathrm{HCP}$ for $N$ large enough. The method is based on integral representation and concentration-compactness results that we prove for general periodic lattices in any dimension.


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