Relative stability of dense crystalline packings

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Abstract
Closed-packed crystalline arrangements of spherical particles interacting via the inverse-twelfth-power intermolecular potential are studied by molecular-dynamics simulations. For systems of 576 and 4608 particles under the condition of constant total energy, the different structures exhibit the same pressure and temperature at high densities, within the accuracy of the computations. The consequences of this apparent degeneracy in determining the relative stability of stackings of hexagonally packed layers are discussed.