Changes of physical properties in multiferroic phase transitions.

Abstract

The physical property coefficients that arise in a phase transition which are zero in the high-symmetry phase and nonzero in the low-symmetry phase are called spontaneous coefficients. For all 1601 Aizu species of phase transitions, matrices have been constructed which show the nonzero coefficients of a wide variety of magnetic and nonmagnetic physical properties including toroidal property coefficients in the high-symmetry phase and their corresponding spontaneous coefficients in the low-symmetry phase. It is also shown that these spontaneous coefficients provide for the distinction of and switching between nonferroelastic domain pairs.