Spectral Analysis of Piezoelectric Tensors

A third order real tensor is called a piezoelectric-type tensor if it is partially symmetric with respect to its last two indices. The piezoelectric tensor is a piezoelectric-type tensor of dimension three. We introduce C-eigenvalues and C-eigenvectors for piezoelectric-type tensors. Here, "C" names after Curie brothers, who first discovered the piezoelectric effect. We show that C-eigenvalues always exist, they are invariant under orthonormal transformations, and for a piezoelectric-type tensor, the largest C-eigenvalue and its C-eigenvectors form the best rank-one piezoelectric-type approximation of that tensor. This means that for the piezoelectric tensor, its largest C-eigenvalue determines the highest piezoelectric coupling constant. We further show that for the piezoelectric tensor, the largest C-eigenvalue corresponds to the electric displacement vector with the largest $2$-norm in the piezoelectric effect under unit uniaxial stress, and the strain tensor with the largest $2$-norm in the converse piezoelectric effect under unit electric field vector. Thus, C-eigenvalues and C-eigenvectors have concrete physical meanings in piezoelectric effect and converse piezoelectric effect. Finally, we apply C-eigenvalues and associated C-eigenvectors for various piezoelectric crystals with different symmetries.