title: Ground states of stealthy hyperuniform potentials. II. Stacked-slider phases.
abstract: Stealthy potentials, a family of long-range isotropic pair potentials, produce infinitely degenerate disordered ground states at high densities and crystalline ground states at low densities in d-dimensional Euclidean space R^{d}. In the previous paper in this series, we numerically studied the entropically favored ground states in the canonical ensemble in the zero-temperature limit across the first three Euclidean space dimensions. In this paper, we investigate using both numerical and theoretical techniques metastable stacked-slider phases, which are part of the ground-state manifold of stealthy potentials at densities in which crystal ground states are favored entropically. Our numerical results enable us to devise analytical models of this phase in two, three, and higher dimensions. Utilizing this model, we estimated the size of the feasible region in configuration space of the stacked-slider phase, finding it to be smaller than that of crystal structures in the infinite-system-size limit, which is consistent with our recent previous work. In two dimensions, we also determine exact expressions for the pair correlation function and structure factor of the analytical model of stacked-slider phases and analyze the connectedness of the ground-state manifold of stealthy potentials in this density regime. We demonstrate that stacked-slider phases are distinguishable states of matter; they are nonperiodic, statistically anisotropic structures that possess long-range orientational order but have zero shear modulus. We outline some possible future avenues of research to elucidate our understanding of this unusual phase of matter.
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.
authors.forename: G
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Zhang
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.
authors.forename: F H
authors.initials: FH
authors.lastname: Stillinger
authors.affiliation: Department of Chemistry, Department of Physics, Princeton Institute for the Science and Technology of Materials, and Program in Applied and Computational Mathematics, Princeton University, Princeton, New Jersey 08544, USA.
authors.forename: S
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Torquato