On strain energy and constitutive relations for alkali metals.

An expression for the strain energy as a continuous differentiable function of the Green-Cauchy deformation tensor is obtained for the alkali metals at absolute zero temperature. The development is based on well established quantum and classical calculations of the various contributions to the crystal energy. Stress-deformation relations are next obtained. As a check on the accuracy of the strain energy, theoretical calculations of the values of the second-order elastic coefficients are obtained and compared to known experimental data. The predicted values are shown to compare quite well with the experimental values.