Der Einfluß des elastischen Gitters auf den Orientierungsübergang von festem Ortho-Wasserstoff in Molekularfeldnäherung

We calculate the influence of the elastic lattice on the orientational order-disorder transition in fcc solid ortho-hydrogen. The angular momentaJ = 1 of the molecules are coupled by quadrupole-quadrupole interaction which we reduce within the space group Pa 3 to the Ising model approximation. Local mechanical equilibrium requires the lattice to adjust itself to the forces caused by the inhomogeneous fluctuations in the angular momentum configuration. Following Wagner 6] this results in a 4-angular-momentum interaction with long range and short range contributions depending on the one-phonon Green function of the lattice. We use a Debye phonon spectrum and the molecular field approximation in order to obtain numerical results. According to the first order nature of the phase transition we get a pressure drop at the critical pointT ^c of 9.7 bar. The experimental value is estimated to be 8 bar. Compared to the rigid lattice the phase transition on the elastic lattice is smoothed out by the short range contribution. This corresponds to a reduction of the discontinuity of the order parameter at the critical pointT ^c by about 13%. The phase transition will vanish completely if we increase the magnitude of the short range terms by a factor of three.