0000000000200123
AUTHOR
Eugène Duval
Continuum elastic sphere vibrations as a model for low-lying optical modes in icosahedral quasicrystals
The nearly dispersionless, so-called "optical" vibrational modes observed by inelastic neutron scattering from icosahedral Al-Pd-Mn and Zn-Mg-Y quasicrystals are found to correspond well to modes of a continuum elastic sphere that has the same diameter as the corresponding icosahedral basic units of the quasicrystal. When the sphere is considered as free, most of the experimentally found modes can be accounted for, in both systems. Taking into account the mechanical connection between the clusters and the remainder of the quasicrystal allows a complete assignment of all optical modes in the case of Al-Pd-Mn. This approach provides support to the relevance of clusters in the vibrational prop…
Boson peak and hybridization of acoustic modes with vibrations of nanometric heterogeneities in glasses
9 pages; International audience; The low-frequency dynamics in glasses is compared with that in icosahedral quasicrystals. For both arrangements of matter, the existence of nanometric heterogeneities, implying the existence of a nanometric inhomogeneous elastic network, is expected to play a crucial role. Thanks to this comparison, mostly based on inelastic x-ray (neutron) scattering data, it is proposed that the excess of vibrational density of states observed in both materials is due to the hybridization of longitudinal and transverse acoustic modes with modes localized around the heterogeneities.
Comment on “Infrared and Raman selection rules for elastic vibrations of spherical nanoparticles”
This Comment demonstrates again that selection rules established several years ago for the infrared absorption and the Raman scattering by vibrations of a spherical nanoparticle are correct and that the claimed errors about them are wrong.
Acoustic vibrations of metal nanoparticles: high order radial mode detection
The vibrational radial modes of silver nanospheres embedded in a glass matrix are investigated using a high sensitivity femtosecond pump-probe technique. The results yield evidence for coherent launching of the fundamental and higher order radial modes in agreement with a sphere dilation mediated excitation model. The results are consistent with low-frequency Raman scattering experiments.
Simple model for the vibrations of embedded elastically cubic nanocrystals
The purpose of this work is to calculate the vibrational modes of an elastically anisotropic sphere embedded in an isotropic matrix. This has important application to understanding the spectra of low-frequency Raman scattering from nanoparticles embedded in a glass matrix. First some low frequency vibrational modes of a free cubically elastic sphere are found to be nearly independent of one combination of elastic constants. This is then exploited to obtain an isotropic approximation for these modes which enables to take into account the surrounding isotropic matrix. This method is then used to quantatively explain recent spectra of gold and copper nanocrystals in glasses.
Effect of physical aging on the low-frequency vibrational density of states of a glassy polymer
The effects of the physical aging on the vibrational density of states (VDOS) of a polymeric glass is studied. The VDOS of a poly(methyl methacrylate) glass at low-energy (<15 meV), was determined from inelastic neutron scattering at low-temperature for two different physical thermodynamical states. One sample was annealed during a long time at temperature lower than Tg, and another was quenched from a temperature higher than Tg. It was found that the VDOS around the boson peak, relatively to the one at higher energy, decreases with the annealing at lower temperature than Tg, i.e., with the physical aging.