Stacking entropy of hard-sphere crystals
Stacking entropy of hard-sphere crystals
Classical hard spheres crystallize at equilibrium at high enough density. Crystals made up of stackings of two-dimensional hexagonal close-packed layers (e.g., fcc, hcp, etc.) differ in entropy by only about ${10}^{\ensuremath{-}3}{k}_{B}$ per sphere (all configurations are degenerate in energy). To readily resolve and study these small entropy differences, we have …