Modelling electric field gradients of icosahedral quasicrystals

Abstract

A simple auxiliary model is presented that enables the extraction of general features of the electric field gradient (EFG) tensor distribution in icosahedral quasicrystals directly from the orientation dependence of the quadrupole-perturbed NMR spectrum. The only assumption of the model is a macroscopic icosahedral symmetry of the sample under study. It is shown that the model serves as a good filter since on the basis of the measured orientation-dependent NMR spectrum it can directly differentiate between qualitatively different icosahedral distributions of the EFG tensor orientations.