Novel low-temperature behavior in classical many-particle systems

Phys Rev Lett. 2009 Jul 31;103(5):050602. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.050602. Epub 2009 Jul 30.

Abstract

We show that classical many-particle systems interacting with certain soft pair interactions in two dimensions exhibit novel low-temperature behaviors. Ground states span from disordered to crystalline. At some densities, a large fraction of normal-mode frequencies vanish. Lattice ground-state configurations have more vanishing frequencies than disordered ground states at the same density and exhibit vanishing shear moduli. For the melting transition from a crystal, the thermal expansion coefficient is negative. These unusual results are attributed to the topography of the energy landscape.