Mapping Disorder in Entropically Ordered Crystals

Abstract

Systems of hard shapes crystallize due to entropy. How is entropy distributed among translational and rotational microscopic contributions? We answer this question by decomposing thermal fluctuation of crystals of hard hexagons into collective modes, a generalization and quantification of the Onsager picture of hard rod liquid crystals. We show that at densities both near densest packing and near the solid-hexatic melting transition, solids of hard regular hexagons hold most of their entropy in translational degrees of freedom.