Monte Carlo study of the shear modulus at the surface of a Lennard-Jones crystal

In this paper, we give a microscopic definition of local elastic constants. We apply this to the numerical evaluation of the shear modulus of an interface which is sharp as compared with the interaction range. The algorithm is applied to a study of the (001) face of a face-centered-cubic (fcc) Lennard-Jones crystal. The vanishing of the shear modulus gives an estimate of the melting temperature of the first layer which is well below the bulk triple point. Some theoretical aspects of surface melting are briefly discussed.