Trends of the elastic constants of cubic transition metals

Abstract

We show for the first time, using ab initio calculations, that the trend exhibited by the elastic constants in the transition metals can be simply understood. In particular, we show that the trend of the elastic constants of cubic transition metals is determined by the energy difference between the fcc and bcc structures of a given element, which in turn is determined by band filling. Our results suggest indirectly that the reason for the disagreement between calculated and ``experimental'' data for crystal energy differences does not lie in the calculated results.