title: Structure of the hard sphere solid.
abstract: We show that near densest packing the perturbations of the hexagonal close packed (hcp) structure yield higher entropy than perturbations of any other densest packing. The difference between the various structures shows up in the correlations between motions of nearest neighbors. In the hcp structure random motion of each sphere impinges slightly less on the motion of its nearest neighbors than in the other structures.
authors.affiliation: Department of Mathematics, University of Texas, Austin, TX 78712, USA. radin@math.utexas.edu
authors.forename: Charles
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Radin
authors.forename: Lorenzo
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Sadun