General up to next-nearest-neighbour elasticity of triangular lattices in three dimensions

Abstract

We establish the most general form of the discrete elasticity of a two-dimensional triangular lattice embedded in three dimensions, taking into account up to next-nearest-neighbour interactions. Besides crystalline system, this is relevant to biological physics (e.g. red blood cell cytoskeleton) and soft matter (e.g. percolating gels, etc.). In order to correctly impose the rotational invariance of the bulk terms, it turns out to be necessary to take into account explicitly the elasticity associated with the vertices located at the edges of the lattice. We find that some terms that were suspected in the literature to violate rotational symmetry are, in fact, admissible.