| Dowman P. Varn Santa Fe Institute 1399 Hyde Park Rd. Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA and Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Tennessee Knoxville, Tennessee 37996, USA |
Geoffrey S. Canright Department of Physics and Astronomy University of Tennessee Knoxville, Tennessee 37996, USA |
James P. Crutchfield Santa Fe Institute 1399 Hyde Park Rd. Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA |
ABSTRACT: We solve a longstanding problem---determining structural information for disordered materials from their diffraction spectra---for the case of planar disorder in close-packed structures (CPSs). Our solution offers the most complete possible statistical description of the disorder, and, from it, we find the minimum effective range for the interlayer interaction in CPSs. We also compare our model of disorder with the so-called fault model (FM) and demonstrate that in simple cases our approach reduces to the FM, but in cases that are more complex it provides a general and more accurate structural description than the FM. We demonstrate our technique on two previously published zinc sulphide diffraction spectra and find that the minimum effective interlayer-interaction range is larger than that calculated from first principles.