COMMENT: Comment on `Inhomogeneities and birefringence in quartz'
Abstract
We comment on the role of the novel incommensurate elongated-triangle (ELT) phase in the huge light scattering in quartz at small angles that was observed more than 40 years ago at the icons/Journals/Common/alpha" ALT="alpha" ALIGN="TOP"/>-icons/Journals/Common/beta" ALT="beta" ALIGN="TOP"/> phase transition and was associated with optical inhomogeneities of unknown nature. The relation of these inhomogeneities with the differently oriented ferroelastic blocks of the ELT phase proposed by us and co-workers in a previous publication was misinterpreted and criticized in a recent article by Aslanyan et al (Aslanyan T E, Shigenari T and Abe K 1998 J. Phys.: Condens. Matter 10 4577), who claimed also that the lock-in occurs at qicons/Journals/Common/neq" ALT="neq" ALIGN="TOP"/>0. Responding to their criticism, we claim that the ELT blocks do have ferroelastic properties which induce the inhomogeneities of optical indices and that the lock-in occurs at q = 0.
- Publication:
-
Journal of Physics Condensed Matter
- Pub Date:
- October 1999
- DOI:
- 10.1088/0953-8984/11/41/321
- Bibcode:
- 1999JPCM...11.8169S