Realizable hyperuniform and nonhyperuniform particle configurations with targeted spectral functions via effective pair interactions

Abstract

The capacity to identify realizable many-body configurations associated with targeted functional forms for the pair correlation function $g_2(r)$ or its corresponding structure factor $\textit{S(k)}$ is of great fundamental and practical importance. While there are obvious necessary conditions that a prescribed structure factor at number density ρ must satisfy to be configurationally realizable, sufficient conditions are generally not known due to the infinite degeneracy of configurations with different higher-order correlation functions. A major aim of this paper is to expand our theoretical knowledge of the class of pair correlation functions or structure factors that are realizable by classical disordered ensembles of particle configurations, including exotic “hyperuniform” varieties. We first introduce a theoretical formalism that provides a means to draw classical particle configurations from canonical ensembles with certain pairwise-additive potentials that could correspond to targeted analytical functional forms for the structure factor. This formulation enables us to devise an improved algorithm to construct systematically canonical-ensemble particle configurations with such targeted pair statistics, whenever realizable. As a proof of concept, we test the algorithm by targeting several different structure factors across dimensions that are known to be realizable and one hyperuniform target that is known to be nontrivially unrealizable. Our algorithm succeeds for all realizable targets and appropriately fails for the unrealizable target, demonstrating the accuracy and power of the method to numerically investigate the realizability problem. Subsequently, we also target several families of structure-factor functions that meet the known necessary realizability conditions but are not known to be realizable by disordered hyperuniform point configurations, including $\textit{d}$-dimensional Gaussian structure factors, $\textit{d}$-dimensional generalizations of the two-dimensional one-component plasma (OCP), and the $\textit{d}$-dimensional Fourier duals of the previous OCP cases. Moreover, we also explore unusual nonhyperuniform targets, including “hyposurficial” and “antihyperuniform” examples. In all of these instances, the targeted structure factors are achieved with high accuracy, suggesting that they are indeed realizable by equilibrium configurations with pairwise interactions at positive temperatures. Remarkably, we also show that the structure factor of nonequilibrium perfect glass, specified by two-, three-, and four-body interactions, can also be realized by equilibrium pair interactions at positive temperatures. In this work, our findings lead us to the conjecture that any realizable structure factor corresponding to either a translationally invariant equilibrium or nonequilibrium system can be attained by an equilibrium ensemble involving only effective pair interactions. Our investigation not only broadens our knowledge of analytical functional forms for $g_2(r)$ and $\textit{S(k)}$ associated with disordered point configurations across dimensions but also deepens our understanding of many-body physics. Moreover, our work can be applied to the design of materials with desirable physical properties that can be tuned by their pair statistics.