Surface energies in a two-dimensional mass-spring model for crystals
We study an atomistic pair potential-energy E(n)(y) that describes the elastic behavior of two-dimensional crystals with n atoms where characterizes the particle positions. The main focus is the asymptotic analysis of the ground state energy as n tends to infinity. We show in a suitable scaling regime where the energy is essentially quadratic that the energy minimum of E(n) admits an asymptotic expansion involving fractional powers of n: The bulk energy density Ebulk is given by an explicit expression...