The presence and effect of martensitic embryos in potassium

Strain induced incommensurate structures in vicinity of reconstructive phase transitions

General conditions controlling the formation of incommensurate phases in crystals undergoing reconstructive phase transitions are analyzed in the framework of a model-free phenomenological approach. A universal trend to stabilizing such intermediate phases in the vicinity of reconstructive phase transitions stems from the fact that certain high-order improper Lifshitz invariants reduce at such transformations to ones bi-linearly coupling critical displacement gradients and strains or even to the proper Lifshitz invariant. The approach developed here introduces a universal mechanism for the formation both of premartensite incommensurate phases and complex structures with giant unit cells, as found in some elemental crystals at high pressure.