Negative Poisson's Ratios for Extreme States of Matter
Ray H. Baughman,
1*
Socrates O. Dantas,
2
Sven Stafström,
3
Anvar A. Zakhidov,
1
Travis B. Mitchell,
4
Daniel H. E. Dubin
5
Negative Poisson's ratios are predicted for
body-centered-cubic phases that likely exist in white dwarf cores and
neutron star outer crusts, as well as those found for
vacuumlike ion crystals, plasma dust crystals, and colloidal crystals
(including certain virus crystals). The existence of this
counterintuitive property, which means that a material laterally
expands when stretched, is experimentally demonstrated for very low
density crystals of trapped ions. At very high densities, the large
predicted negative and positive Poisson's ratios might be important
for understanding the asteroseismology of neutron stars and white
dwarfs and the effect of stellar stresses on nuclear reaction rates.
Giant Poisson's ratios are both predicted and observed for highly
strained coulombic photonic crystals, suggesting possible applications
of large, tunable Poisson's ratios for photonic crystal devices.
1 Honeywell International, Honeywell Technology Center,
Morristown, NJ 07962-1021, USA.
2 Departamento de
Física, Universidade Federal de Juiz de Fora (UFJF), Juiz de
Fora, 36036-330, Mina Gerais, Brazil.
3 Department of
Physics and Measurement Technology, Linköping University, S-581
83, Linköping, Sweden.
4 National Institute of
Standards and Technology, Boulder, CO 80303, USA.
5 Department of Physics, University of California at San
Diego, La Jolla, CA 92093, USA.
*
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
ray.baughman{at}honeywell.com
