Effects of scars on crystalline shell stability under external pressure

Abstract

We study how the stability of spherical crystalline shells under external pressure is influenced by the defect structure. In particular, we compare stability for shells with a minimal set of topologically-required defects to shells with extended defect arrays (grain boundary "scars" with non-vanishing net disclination charge). We perform Monte Carlo simulations to compare how shells with and without scars deform quasi-statically under external hydrostatic pressure. We find that the critical pressure at which shells collapse is lowered for scarred configurations that break icosahedral symmetry and raised for scars that preserve icosahedral symmetry. The particular shapes which arise from breaking of an initial icosahedrally-symmetric shell depend on the F\"oppl-von K\'arm\'an number.Comment: 8 pages, 6 figure