English

Anharmonicity, vibrational instability and Boson peak in glasses

Disordered Systems and Neural Networks 2009-11-07 v2 Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

We show that a {\em vibrational instability} of the spectrum of weakly interacting quasi-local harmonic modes creates the maximum in the inelastic scattering intensity in glasses, the Boson peak. The instability, limited by anharmonicity, causes a complete reconstruction of the vibrational density of states (DOS) below some frequency ωc\omega_c, proportional to the strength of interaction. The DOS of the new {\em harmonic modes} is independent of the actual value of the anharmonicity. It is a universal function of frequency depending on a single parameter -- the Boson peak frequency, ωb\omega_b which is a function of interaction strength. The excess of the DOS over the Debye value is ω4\propto\omega^4 at low frequencies and linear in ω\omega in the interval ωbωωc\omega_b \ll \omega \ll \omega_c. Our results are in an excellent agreement with recent experimental studies.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0203165,
  title  = {Anharmonicity, vibrational instability and Boson peak in glasses},
  author = {V. L. Gurevich and D. A. Parshin and H. R. Schober},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0203165},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

LaTeX, 8 pages, 6 figures