Commensurate and Incommensurate Ordering Tendencies in the Ternary fcc Cu-Ni-Zn System

We show that Fermi-surface (FS) nesting drives both the incommensurate and commensurate ordering tendencies of the fcc ternary Cu-Ni-Zn system. Surprisingly, commensurate order persists over a wide range of composition, despite its origins. For ${\mathrm{Cu}}_2$NiZn, we discuss how FS nesting and the other effects of alloying lead to ordering tendencies consistent with the experimentally observed order-disorder transformations. All calculations are based on a first-principles theory of the atomic short-range order in alloys with an arbitrary number of components.