On the crystallization of 2D hexagonal lattices (Q842422)

From the authors' abstract: It is a fundamental problem to understand why solids form crystals and how atomic interaction determines the particular crystal structure that a material selects. In this paper we focus on the zero temperature case and consider a class of atomic potentials V expressed as the sum of a pair potential of Lennard-Jones type and a three-body potential of Stillinger-Weber type. For this class of potentials we prove that the ground state energy per particle converges to a finite value as the number of particles tends to infinity. This value is given by the corresponding value for an optimal hexagonal lattice, optimized with respect to the lattice spacing. Furthermore, under suitable periodic or Dirichlet boundary condition, we show that the minimizers do form a hexagonal lattice.