A theory for the photoelastic behaviour of transparent polycrystalline aggregates consisting of randomly oriented anisotropic crystallites has been developed. Such an aggregate is isotropic but it becomes birefringent under the influence of a uniaxial load. The photoelastic constants of the aggregate are given by the components of the spatial average of the photoelastic tensor of the single crystal, and are worked out by assuming either the strain to be continuous (Voigt approximation) or the stress to be continuous (Reuss approximation). The components of the average photoelastic tensor are very different for these two limits. The elastic and the photoelastic constants of alkali halide aggregates have been evaluated for both the stress continuity and the strain continuity conditions. The maximum variation of the elastic constants in going from the Voigt to the Reuss condition is 50 per cent while the photoelastic birefringence can vary by as much as 300 per cent in alkali halides. In the case of KI and rubidium halides even the sign of the photoelastic birefringence is different for the two limits.

The electronic phase transition in cerium occurring near 7 kbar pressure at room temperature which is attributed to the 4f–5d electron promotion has been studied using thermoelectric power as a tool. The important results that have emerged out of this work are: (a) the relatively large variation in the absolute thermoelectric power ofγ-cerium (normal fcc phase) with pressure prior to the phase transition (in contrast to the rather small resistivity change with pressure in this region); (b) a sharp decrease in the thermoelectric power accompanying the iso-structuralγ-α phase transition; and (c) the continuous decrease in the thermoelectric power ofα-cerium (collapsed fcc phase) with pressure, ultimately changing sign at higher pressures. An explanation based on the “virtual bound state” model is proposed to account for these results.

The possibility of writing the repulsive energy in the Born model of binary ionic crystals as a sum of two separate contributions from the two ions has been investigated. Such an approach leads to two identities, one connecting the lattice spacings of a family of ionic crystals and the other connecting their compressibilities. These identities have been tested on the alkali halide crystals over a range of pressures. The agreement is found to be quite satisfactory. Some further predictions with respect to crystals which exist as two polymorphs have also been tested. In all cases, the deviations of the experimental values from the exact identities can be traced to the fact that second neighbour repulsions in the crystals have been neglected. It is hence concluded that individual compressive energies for ions in ionic crystals is a very attractive possibility.

Ions in ionic crystals are considered to exist in compressible space-filling polyhedral cells analogous to the Wigner-Seitz cell in metals. Repulsion arises from the compression energy of the ions written as a surface integral over the ionic cells. Two adjustable parameters are introduced per ion with the provision that the same parameters can be used in any crystal of any structure in which the ion occurs. The 18 parameters for the 5 alkali and 4 halogen ions have been determined from PV data on the 20 alkali halides. The important successes of the theory are: (i) All the twenty alkali halides are correctly predicted to occur in their observed structures (ii) The thermal transition in CsCl is explained (iii) The pressure transitions in the alkali halides are predicted well (iv) The calculated values of the variation of transition pressures with temperature agree well with experiment. These results are much better than those obtained by earlier theories.

The article reviews the experimental techniques used in high pressure-low temperature investigations to study a variety of physico-chemical phenomena. The general principles of producing high pressures at low temperatures, the methods of measuring P and T, the materials used for construction and the diamond anvil cell (DAC) are briefly given first. Specific pieces of apparatus to measure the mechanical properties, phase equilibria, thermal properties, electrical properties, magnetic phenomena, optical and Raman/IR spectroscopic behaviour as well as Mössbauer spectra are then discussed. While instrumentation is the main emphasis of the article, a few illustrative examples of interesting observations are also indicated. Over 250 current papers are cited.