Novel Low-Temperature Behavior in Classical Many-Particle Systems

2009/07/02 by Robert D. Batten, Batten, Robert D., Frank H. Stillinger +3 · 2 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #FOS: Physical sciences #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #Statistical Mechanics and Entropy #Theoretical and Computational Physics

paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.0907.0447

openalex publication_date 2009/07/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28

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.

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