A numerical renormalization group study of laser-induced freezing

We study the phenomenon of laser-induced freezing, within a numerical renormalization scheme which allows explicit comparison with a recent defect-mediated melting theory. Precise values for the "bare" dislocation fugacities and elastic moduli of the 2d hard-disk system are obtained from a constrained Monte Carlo simulation sampling only configurations without dislocations. These are used as inputs to appropriate renormalization flow equations to obtain the equilibrium phase diagram. We show that the flow equations need to be correct at least up to third order in defect fugacity to reproduce meaningful results