Wulff shape emergence in graphene

Abstract

Graphene samples are identified as minimizers of configurational energies featuring both two- and three-body atomic-interaction terms. This variational viewpoint allows for a detailed description of ground-state geometries as connected subsets of a regular hexagonal lattice. We investigate here how these geometries evolve as the number [Formula: see text] of carbon atoms in the graphene sample increases. By means of an equivalent characterization of minimality via a discrete isoperimetric inequality, we prove that ground states converge to the ideal hexagonal Wulff shape as [Formula: see text]. Precisely, ground states deviate from such hexagonal Wulff shape by at most [Formula: see text] atoms, where both the constant [Formula: see text] and the rate [Formula: see text] are sharp.