  Mechanically induced crystallographic phase transformation that reflects
dynamic stress responses of intrinsically stochastic nature is a pertinent yet
much less well-understood phenomenon. We focus on understanding the physical
significance of stochasticity and how it can enable inference of principles
underlying a crystallographic phase transformation. For interpreting the
mechanical responses, a statistical approach of mapping the transformation
dynamics to a probabilistic escape of crystallographic states defined on a free
energy landscape is shown to reliably explain the patterns of response. We
demonstrate that stochastic responses associated with a structural phase
transformation can offer a reliable quantitative tool for unravelling the
energy profile, intrinsic kinetics, and microscopic details of solid-to-solid
crystallographic transitions.
