Two-dimensional melting, solid-state stability, and the Kosterlitz-Thouless-Feynman criterion

The melting transition for simple atomic, two-dimensional solids occurs in the Monte Carlo computer experiments at the Kosterlitz-Thouless-Feynman instability temperature and with first-order behavior, in contradiction with renormalization-group arguments. It is pointed out that this melting temperature is not the thermodynamic melting temperature but an upper limit for the stability of the metastable solid. © 1981 The American Physical Society.