title: Grain boundary scars and spherical crystallography.
abstract: We describe experimental investigations of the structure of two-dimensional spherical crystals. The crystals, formed by beads self-assembled on water droplets in oil, serve as model systems for exploring very general theories about the minimum-energy configurations of particles with arbitrary repulsive interactions on curved surfaces. Above a critical system size we find that crystals develop distinctive high-angle grain boundaries, or scars, not found in planar crystals. The number of excess defects in a scar is shown to grow linearly with the dimensionless system size. The observed slope is expected to be universal, independent of the microscopic potential.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics, E22, Technische Universität München, 85747 München, Germany.
authors.forename: A R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Bausch
authors.forename: M J
authors.initials: MJ
authors.lastname: Bowick
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Cacciuto
authors.forename: A D
authors.initials: AD
authors.lastname: Dinsmore
authors.forename: M F
authors.initials: MF
authors.lastname: Hsu
authors.forename: D R
authors.initials: DR
authors.lastname: Nelson
authors.forename: M G
authors.initials: MG
authors.lastname: Nikolaides
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Travesset
authors.forename: D A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Weitz