Flexocoupling impact on the generalized susceptibility and soft phonon modes in the ordered phase of ferroics

TL;DR

This paper investigates how flexoelectric coupling influences generalized susceptibility and soft phonon modes in the ordered phase of ferroics, revealing new effects on phonon spectra and susceptibility behavior through analytical modeling.

Contribution

It provides the first analytical expressions for susceptibility and phonon dispersion in ferroelectrics considering flexocoupling effects, including non-diagonal susceptibility components.

Findings

Flexocoupling broadens the susceptibility k-spectrum.

Flexocoupling reduces correlation radii.

Degeneration of transverse optic and acoustic modes disappears in ferroelectric phase.

Abstract

Flexoelectric effect impact on the generalized susceptibility and soft phonons dispersion was not studied in the long-range ordered phases of ferroics. The gap in the knowledge motivated us to establish the impact of the flexocoupling on the correlation function of the long-range order parameter fluctuations in ferroelectric phase of ferroics with local disordering sources. Within Landau-Ginzburg-Devonshire approach we obtained analytical expressions for the generalized susceptibility and phonon dispersion relations in the ferroelectric phase. Unexpectedly, the joint action of static and dynamic flexoelectric effect induces non-diagonal components of generalized susceptibility, which amplitude is proportional to the convolution of the spontaneous polarization with flexocoupling constants. The flexocoupling essentially broaden the k-spectrum of generalized susceptibility and so decreases the correlation radii, as well as leads to the additional "pushing away" of the optical and acoustic soft mode phonon branches. The contribution of spontaneous polarization via ferroelectric nonlinearity and electrostriction mechanisms can lead to both broadening and narrowing on the susceptibility k-spectrum. Due to the joint action of flexoelectric coupling and spontaneous polarization the degeneration of the transverse optic and acoustic modes disappears in the soft phonon spectrum in a ferroelectric phase in comparison with the spectra in a paraelectric phase. These effects have been studied quantitatively for ferroelectric lead zirconate titanate using realistic values of static and dynamic flexocouplings and cubic symmetry approximation for the elastic properties. Also we derived general expressions for correlation function for arbitrary symmetry, elastic and electrostrictive anisotropy.