Title: Low-Coordinated Ground States using Monotonic Convex Pair Potentials

Author (Talk): Etienne Marcotte, Princeton University

Abstract:

Isotropic pair interactions can be optimized through the use of inverse statistical mechanical methods to produce low coordinated crystal ground states in two and three dimensions that spontaneously assemble from random initial configurations. Since the resulting pair potentials use multiple extrema to yield their respective ground states, an interesting question is whether these extrema are required to obtain the desired ground states. Here I present an application of inverse statistical mechanical techniques to discover a class of isotropic pair potentials which, in addition to stabalizing low coordinated ground states in two dimensions such as the square and honeycomb crystals, are also monotonic and convex. This clearly demonstrates that local extrema are not necessary to produce low coordinated ground states.