Face-centered cubic crystallization of atomistic configurations (Q495903)

A material is crystalline if its underlying atomic structure comprises a multi-lattice of particles. The number of underlying atomic structures is small; more than half of the metals crystallize into a face-centered cubic lattice, a hexagonal-close packed crystal lattice or a body-centered cubic lattice. In the paper, the authors mainly consider the cases where the optimal lattice is the face-centered cubic lattice. A large set of energy functions \(E: \mathbb R^{3\times n}\to\mathbb R\) which are invariant under translations, rotations and permutations is provided for which the optimality of unique periodic lattice configurations can be shown in the many-particle limit \(n\to\infty\).