Most stable structure for hard spheres.
The hard sphere model is known to show a liquid-solid phase transition, with the solid expected to be either face centered cubic or hexagonal close packed. The differences in free energy of the two structures are very small and various attempts have been made to determine which structure is the more stable. We contrast the different approaches and extend one.
Koch
Hans
H
Department of Mathematics, University of Texas, Austin, Texas 78712, USA. koch@math.utexas.edu
Radin
Charles
C
Sadun
Lorenzo
L