LOCAL ATOMIC ENVIRONMENTS OF HARD MAGNETS, METALLIC GLASSES, AND ICOSAHEDRAL PHASES

Voronoi polyhedra furnish a useful measure of the local environment of an atom, including a description of the site symmetry of the atom, an d a catalog of what atoms constitute its nearest neighbors. A modified Voronoi construction also accounts for the relative sizes of the vari ous atoms. Several applications of such polyhedra are presented, inclu ding magnetic moments and anisotropies in hard magnets, polymorphism i n metallic glasses, local environments in quasicrystals, and supersymm etry in alphaMn.