Theory of dendritic growth in the presence of lattice strain.

We discuss elastic effects due to lattice strain which are a new key ingredient in the theory of dendritic growth for solid-solid transformations. Both thermal and elastic fields are eliminated by Green's function techniques, and a closed nonlinear integro-differential equation for the evolution of the interface is derived. We find dendritic patterns even without the anisotropy of the surface energy required by classical dendritic growth theory. In this sense, elastic effects serve as a new selection mechanism.