Pre-melting in fcc structure with relaxation

We study the effect of melting of a well-defined crystal surface within the framework of the theory of atomic vibrations in harmonic approximation. We find that for the face centered cubic lattice we may expect the existence of pre-melting. It is also shown that the occurrence or absence of surface melting depends strongly on the relaxation of a lattice constant. This paper is financially supported by the State Committee for Research grant (KBN grant 2 0294 91 01/92–94).