An improved method of using sound velocity measurements to determine the Debye temperature of cubic and noncubic materials

An examination is made of the Debye theory of lattice vibrations and its applicability as an averaging scheme for computing the average phase velocity and the Debye characteristic temperature. A theoretical description of an improved averaging scheme is formulated, based on the Debye theory. The new scheme offers procedures for computation of the elastic Debye temperature with drastic reductions of computational time compared with other schemes. Numerical results are presented and compared with previous results whenever possible and with experimental data. With the new averaging scheme, there is excellent concordance between theory and observations for the elastic Debye temperature for cubic materials.