Abstract

Metastable states in first-order phase transitions reveal interesting behavior about a wide range of systems in statistical mechanics, including spin systems, cellular automata, and condensed matter systems. These metastable states are often observed in a microcanonical setting, where they manifest long-range correlations due to collective effects. In this work, we show the existence of long-range potential energy correlations between atoms in a microcanonical superheated Lennard-Jones crystal prior to homogeneous melting. Our results suggest that the cooperative motion made possible by the presence of vacancy-interstitial pairs above the melting temperature induces effective long-range interatomic forces even beyond the fourth neighboring layer. Published under license by AIP Publishing.