Instability of Alexander-McTague crystals and its implication for nucleation.
We show that the argument of Alexander and McTague, that the bcc crystalline structure is favored in those crystallization processes where the first-order character is not too pronounced, is not correct. We find that any solution that satisfies the Alexander-McTague condition is not stable. We investigate the implication of this result for nucleation near the pseudospinodal in near-meanfield systems.
Klein
W
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Center for Non-Linear Studies, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Los Alamos, New Mexico 87545, USA.