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Periodicity-Doubling Cascades: Direct Observation in Ferroelastic Materials.

Published version
Peer-reviewed

Type

Article

Change log

Authors

Everhardt, Arnoud S 
Damerio, Silvia 
Zorn, Jacob A 
Zhou, Silang 
Domingo, Neus 

Abstract

Very sensitive responses to external forces are found near phase transitions. However, transition dynamics and preequilibrium phenomena are difficult to detect and control. We have observed that the equilibrium domain structure following a phase transition in ferroelectric and ferroelastic BaTiO_{3} is attained by halving of the domain periodicity multiple times. The process is reversible, with periodicity doubling as temperature is increased. This observation is reminiscent of the period-doubling cascades generally observed during bifurcation phenomena, and, thus, it conforms to the "spatial chaos" regime earlier proposed by Jensen and Bak [Phys. Scr. T 9, 64 (1985)PHSTER0281-184710.1088/0031-8949/1985/T9/009] for systems with competing spatial modulations.

Description

Keywords

cond-mat.mtrl-sci, cond-mat.mtrl-sci

Journal Title

Phys Rev Lett

Conference Name

Journal ISSN

0031-9007
1079-7114

Volume Title

123

Publisher

American Physical Society (APS)

Rights

All rights reserved
Sponsorship
Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EP/P024904/1)
EPSRC