Elastic properties of the rectangular crystalline phase of planar hard cyclic pentamers

Structural and elastic properties of the densest known solid phase of two-dimensional (2D) system of hard cyclic pentamers (each pentamer is composed of five discs which centres are placed at vertices of a perfect pentagon of sides equal to the disc diameter, delta) are studied by Monte Carlo simulations. The present study confirms that at high densities the pentamers form a 2D solid structure of rectangular lattice with two pentamers (which librate, without rotation, around their mean orientations) in the unit cell. Elastic constants calculated for this structure show that, in contrast to densely packed 2D hard cyclic heptamers (composed of seven discs of centres forming a perfect heptagon of sides equal to the disc diameter delta), the pentamers do not exhibit anomalous Poisson's ratios.