Study of Elastic Constants under the Effect of Temperature

A simple theoretical model is proposed to predict the second, third and fourth order elastic constants for TmTe crystal as a function of temperature. A theory for obtaining higher order elastic constants has been developed starting from primary physical parameters viz. nearest neighbour distance and hardness parameter assuming long- and shortrange potentials. In this study, elastic constants are computed upto 1000K for TmTe. It is found that the elastic constants, in general, decrease with temperature. The theoretical prediction reported in this paper is well supported by the available data.