Application of elastostatic Green function tensor technique to electrostriction incubic, hexagonaland orthorhombic crystals

Abstract

The elastostatic Green function tensor approach, which was recently used to treatelectrostriction in the numerical simulation of domain structure formation in cubicferroelectrics, is reviewed and extended to the crystals of hexagonal andorthorhombic symmetry. The tensorial kernels appearing in the expressions foreffective nonlocal interaction of electrostrictive origin are derived explicitly andtheir physical meaning is illustrated by simple examples. It is argued that thebilinear coupling between the polarization gradients and elastic strain should besystematically included in the Ginzburg–Landau free energy expansion ofelectrostrictive materials.