  The influence of flexoelectric coupling on the internal structure of neutral
domain walls in tetragonal phase of perovskite ferroelectrics is studied. The
effect is shown to lower the symmetry of 180-degree walls which are oblique
with respect to the cubic crystallographic axes, while {100} and {110} walls
stay "untouched". Being of the Ising type in the absence of the flexoelectric
interaction, the oblique domain walls acquire a new polarization component with
a structure qualitatively different from the classical Bloch-wall structure. In
contrast to the Bloch-type walls, where the polarization vector draws a helix
on passing from one domain to the other, in the flexoeffect-affected wall, the
polarization rotates in opposite directions on the two sides of the wall and
passes through zero in its center. Since the resulting polarization profile is
invariant upon inversion with respect to the wall center it does not brake the
wall symmetry in contrast to the classical Bloch-type walls. The flexoelectric
coupling lower the domain wall energy and gives rise to its additional
anisotropy that is comparable to that conditioned by the elastic anisotropy.
The atomic orderof- magnitude estimates shows that the new polarization
component P2 may be comparable with spontaneous polarization Ps, thus
suggesting that, in general, the flexoelectric coupling should be mandatory
included in domain wall simulations in ferroelectrics. Calculations performed
for barium titanate yields the maximal value of the P2, which is much smaller
than that of the spontaneous polarization. This smallness is attributed to an
anomalously small value of a component of the "strain-polarization"
elecrostictive tensor in this material.
