Search results for "Boson peak"

Supercooled Water Confined in a Silica Xerogel: Temperature and Pressure Dependence of Boson Peak and of Mean Square Displacements

2013

A silica xerogel can be obtained from an alcoxide precursor (TMOS, tetramethylortosilcate) via the sol-gel method: TMOS hydrolysis and subsequent polycondensation yields a solid, disordered, porous SiO2 matrix (average pore dimensions ~20Å). Inside the pores water is trapped and the hydration level h=gr[H2O]/gr[SiO2] can be easily controlled. The presence and temperature dependence of the boson peak (BP) in xerogel confined supercooled water was studied with inelastic neutron scattering (spectrometer IN6 at ILL, Grenoble) in xerogel samples having h=0.4 and h=0.2. After careful subtraction of the contributions arising from the matrix and from quasi-elastic scattering, the BP contribution wa…

Theory of vibrational anomalies in glasses

2015

Abstract The theory of elasticity with spatially fluctuating elastic constants (heterogeneous-elasticity theory) is reviewed. It is shown that the vibrational anomalies associated with the boson peak can be qualitatively and quantitatively explained in terms of this theory. Two versions of a mean-field theory for solving the stochastic equation of motion are presented: the coherent-potential approximation (CPA) and the self-consistent Born approximation (SCBA). It is shown that the latter is included in the former in the Gaussian and weak-disorder limit. We are able to discuss and explain cases in which the change of the vibrational spectrum by varying an external parameter can be accounted…

Sound attenuation and anharmonic damping in solids with correlated disorder

2010

We study via self-consistent Born approximation a model for sound waves in a disordered environment, in which the local fluctuations of the shear modulus G are spatially correlated with a certain correlation length The theory predicts an enhancement of the density of states over Debye's omega(2) law (boson peak) whose intensity increases for increasing correlation length, and whose frequency position is shifted downwards as lg. Moreover, the predicted disorder-induced sound attenuation coefficient r(k) obeys a universal scaling law F(k) = f (ke) for a given variance of G. Finally, the inclusion of the lowest-order contribution to the anharmonic sound damping into the theory allows us to rec…

The boson peak of deeply cooled confined water reveals the existence of a low-temperature liquid-liquid crossover.

2014

International audience; The Boson peak of deeply cooled water confined in the pores of a silica xerogel is studied by inelastic neutron scattering at different hydration levels to separate the contributions from matrix, water on the pore surfaces and "internal" water. Our results reveal that at high hydration level, where the contribution from internal water is dominant, the temperature dependence of the Boson peak intensity shows an inflection point at about 225 K. The complementary use of differential scanning calorimetry to describe the thermodynamics of the system allows identifying the inflection point as the signature of a water liquid-liquid crossover.

Disorder-induced vibrational anomalies from crystalline to amorphous solids

2021

The origin of boson peak -- an excess of density of states over Debye's model in glassy solids -- is still under intense debate, among which some theories and experiments suggest that boson peak is related to van-Hove singularity. Here we show that boson peak and van-Hove singularity are well separated identities, by measuring the vibrational density of states of a two-dimensional granular system, where packings are tuned gradually from a crystalline, to polycrystals, and to an amorphous material. We observe a coexistence of well separated boson peak and van-Hove singularities in polycrystals, in which the van-Hove singularities gradually shift to higher frequency values while broadening th…

Self-consistent Euclidean-random-matrix theory

2019

Comment on "Universal Origin of Boson Peak Vibrational Anomalies in Ordered Crystals and in Amorphous Materials".

2021

Glass Transition and Glass Dynamics

2014

The transition from an undercooled liquid towards a glass (glass transition) is introduced and discussed in terms of mode-coupling theory. It is demonstrated that mode-coupling theory leads to a two-step relaxation scenario near the transition with time-critical exponents, which characterize the two relaxation steps (beta and alpha relaxation). The anomalous vibrational properties of a disordered solid (glass) is explained in terms of a model with spatially fluctuating harmonic force constants.

The Boson Peak of Amyloid Fibrils: Probing the Softness of Protein Aggregates by Inelastic Neutron Scattering

2014

Proteins and polypeptides are characterized by low-frequency vibrations in the terahertz regime responsible for the so-called "boson peak". The shape and position of this peak are related to the mechanical properties of peptide chains. Amyloid fibrils are ordered macromolecular assemblies, spontaneously formed in nature, characterized by unique biological and nanomechanical properties. In this work, we investigate the effects of the amyloid state and its polymorphism on the boson peak. We used inelastic neutron scattering to probe low-frequency vibrations of the glucagon polypeptide in the native state and in two different amyloid morphologies in both dry and hydrated sample states. The dat…

Harmonic Vibrational Excitations in Disordered Solids and the "Boson Peak"

1998

We consider a system of coupled classical harmonic oscillators with spatially fluctuating nearest-neighbor force constants on a simple cubic lattice. The model is solved both by numerically diagonalizing the Hamiltonian and by applying the single-bond coherent potential approximation. The results for the density of states $g(\omega)$ are in excellent agreement with each other. As the degree of disorder is increased the system becomes unstable due to the presence of negative force constants. If the system is near the borderline of stability a low-frequency peak appears in the reduced density of states $g(\omega)/\omega^2$ as a precursor of the instability. We argue that this peak is the anal…