Polycritical Points and Floplike Displacive Transitions in Perovskites

The critical behavior occurring at displacive phase transitions in anisotropically stressed perovskite crystals is examined. It is shown that, under various conditions, the asymptotic critical behavior may be of Ising, XY-model, or Heisenberg type. The existence of a "spin-flop"-like transition (at zero stress) between two differently ordered phases is predicted. An explanation of the discrepancy between the measured exponents and those predicted theoretically is proposed, and several new experiments are suggested.