High-fugacity expansion and crystallization in non-sliding hard-core lattice particle models without a tiling constraint

Abstract

In this paper, we prove the existence of a crystallization transition for a family of hard-core particle models on periodic graphs in arbitrary dimensions. We establish a criterion under which crystallization occurs at sufficiently high densities. The criterion is more general than that in [Jauslin, Lebowitz, Comm. Math. Phys. 364:2, 2018], as it allows models in which particles do not tile the space in the close-packing configurations, such as discrete hard-disk models. To prove crystallization, we prove that the pressure is analytic in the inverse of the fugacity for large enough complex fugacities, using Pirogov-Sinai theory. One of the main tools used for this result is the definition of a local density, based on a discrete generalization of Voronoi cells. We illustrate the criterion by proving that it applies to two examples: staircase models and the radius 2.5 hard-disk model on the square lattice.