Elastic properties of two dimensional hard discs in the close packing limit

Elastic constants and the Poisson ratio of defect-free hard disc solid are determined by two independent methods: (1) analysis of the box side fluctuations in the NpT ensemble with variable box +shape and (2) numerical differentiation (with respect to strain components) of the free energy computed in the NVT ensemble. It is shown that reasonable estimates of the elastic properties can be obtained by studying small systems and that the singular behavior of the elastic constants near close packing is well described by the free volume approximation; the coefficients of the leading singularities are estimated.