Incommensurate systems as model compounds for disorder revealing low-temperature glasslike behavior

Stringlet excitation model of the boson peak

The boson peak (BP), a low-energy excess in the vibrational density of states over the Debye contribution, is often identified as a characteristic of amorphous solid materials. Despite decades of efforts, its microscopic origin still remains a mystery. Recently, it has been proposed, and corroborated with simulations, that the BP might stem from intrinsic localized modes involving one-dimensional (1D) string-like excitations ("stringlets"). We build on a theory originally proposed by Lund that describes the localized modes as 1D vibrating strings, but we specify the stringlet size distribution to be exponential, as observed in simulations. We provide an analytical prediction for the BP frequency ωBP in the temperature regime well below the observed glass transition temperature Tg. The prediction involves no free parameters and accords quantitatively with prior simulation observations in 2D and 3D model glasses based on inverse power law potentials. The comparison of the string model to observations is more uncertain when compared to simulations of an Al-Sm metallic glass material at temperatures well above Tg. Nonetheless, our stringlet model of the BP naturally reproduces the softening of the BP frequency upon heating and offers an analytical explanation for the experimentally observed scaling with the shear modulus in the glass state and changes in this scaling in simulations of glass-forming liquids. Finally, the theoretical analysis highlights the existence of a strong damping for the stringlet modes above Tg, which leads to a large low-frequency contribution to the 3D vibrational density of states, observed in both experiments and simulations.

Role of Optical Phonons and Anharmonicity in the Appearance of the Heat Capacity Boson Peak-like Anomaly in Fully Ordered Molecular Crystals

We demonstrate that the heat capacity Boson peak (BP)-like anomaly appearing in fully ordered anharmonic molecular crystals emerges as a result of the strong interactions between propagating (acoustic) and low-energy quasi-localized (optical) phonons. In particular, we experimentally determine the low-temperature (<30 K) specific heat of the molecular crystal benzophenone and those of several of its fully ordered bromine derivatives. Subsequently, by means of theoretical first-principles methods based on density functional theory, we estimate the corresponding phonon dispersions and vibrational density of states. Our results reveal two possible mechanisms for the emergence of the BP-like anomaly: (i) acoustic-optic phonon avoided crossing, which gives rise to a pseudo-van Hove singularity in the acoustic phonon branches, and (ii) piling up of low-frequency optical phonons, which are quasi degenerate with longitudinal acoustic modes and lead to a surge in the vibrational density of states at low energies.

Boson-peak-like anomaly caused by transverse phonon softening in strain glass

Strain glass is a glassy state with frozen ferroelastic/martensitic nanodomains in shape memory alloys, yet its nature remains unclear. Here, we report a glassy feature in strain glass that was thought to be only present in structural glasses. An abnormal hump is observed in strain glass around 10 K upon normalizing the specific heat by cubed temperature, similar to the boson peak in metallic glass. The simulation studies show that this boson-peak-like anomaly is caused by the phonon softening of the non-transforming matrix surrounding martensitic domains, which occurs in a transverse acoustic branch not associated with the martensitic transformation displacements. Therefore, this anomaly neither is a relic of van Hove singularity nor can be explained by other theories relying on structural disorder, while it verifies a recent theoretical model without any assumptions of disorder. This work might provide fresh insights in understanding the nature of glassy states and associated vibrational properties.

Debye Brownian oscillator and Debye-type noise: A series solution versus Monte Carlo simulation

For the Debye Brownian oscillator, we present a series solution to the generalized Langevin equation describing the motion of a particle. The external potential is considered to be a harmonic potential and the spectral density of driven noise is a hard cutoff at high finite frequencies. The results are in agreement with both numerical calculations and Monte Carlo simulations. We demonstrate abnormal weak ergodic breaking; specifically, the long-time average of the observable vanishes but the corresponding ensemble average continues to oscillate with time. This Debye Brownian oscillator does not arrive at an equilibrium state and undergoes underdamped-like motion for any model parameter. Nevertheless, ergodic behavior and equilibrium can be recovered concurrently using a strong bound potential. We give an understanding of the behavior as being the consequence of discrete breather modes in the lattices similar to the formation of an additional periodic signal. Furthermore, we compare the results calculated by cutting off separately the spectral density and the correlation function of colored noise.

Discovery of a Low Thermal Conductivity Oxide Guided by Probe Structure Prediction and Machine Learning

We report the aperiodic titanate Ba10 Y6 Ti4 O27 with a room-temperature thermal conductivity that equals the lowest reported for an oxide. The structure is characterised by discontinuous occupancy modulation of each of the sites and can be considered as a quasicrystal. The resulting localisation of lattice vibrations suppresses phonon transport of heat. This new lead material for low-thermal-conductivity oxides is metastable and located within a quaternary phase field that has been previously explored. Its isolation thus requires a precisely defined synthetic protocol. The necessary narrowing of the search space for experimental investigation was achieved by evaluation of titanate crystal chemistry, prediction of unexplored structural motifs that would favour synthetically accessible new compositions, and assessment of their properties with machine-learning models.

Heat capacity signature of frustrated trimerons in magnetite

Recently it has been proposed that the long-range electronic order formed by trimerons in magnetite should be frustrated due to the great degeneracy of arrangements linking trimerons. This result has important consequences as charge ordering from the condensed minority band electrons leads to a complex 3D antiferro orbital order pattern. Further more, the corner sharing tetrahedra structure of spinel B-sites supports frustration for antiferromagnetic alignments. Therefore frustration due to competing interactions will itself induce disorder and very likely frustration in the spin orientations. Here we present very low temperature specific heat data that show two deviations to the magnons and phonons contributions, that we analyze in terms of Schottky-type anomalies. The first one is associated with the thermal activation across both ferroelastic twin and ferromagnetic anti-phase domains. The second Schottky-type anomaly displays an inverse (1/H) field dependence which is a direct indication of the disordered glassy network with macroscopically degenerated singular ground states.

Universal Origin of Boson Peak Vibrational Anomalies in Ordered Crystals and in Amorphous Materials

The vibrational spectra of solids, both ordered and amorphous, in the low-energy regime, control the thermal and transport properties of materials, from heat capacity to heat conduction, electron-phonon couplings, conventional superconductivity, etc. The old Debye model of vibrational spectra at low energy gives the vibrational density of states (VDOS) as proportional to the frequency squared, but in many materials the spectrum departs from this law which results in a peak upon normalizing the VDOS by frequency squared, which is known as the "boson peak." A description of the VDOS of solids (both crystals and glasses) is presented starting from first principles. Without using any assumptions whatsoever of disorder in the material, it is shown that the boson peak in the VDOS of both ordered crystals and glasses arises naturally from the competition between elastic mode propagation and diffusive damping. The theory explains the recent experimental observations of boson peak in perfectly ordered crystals, which cannot be explained based on previous theoretical frameworks. The theory also explains, for the first time, how the vibrational spectrum changes with the atomic density of the solid, and explains recent experimental observations of this effect.

Implanted muon spin spectroscopy on 2-O-adamantane: a model system that mimics the liquid[Formula: see text]glasslike transitions

The transition taking place between two metastable phases in 2-O-adamantane, namely the [Formula: see text] cubic, rotator phase and the lower temperature P2₁/c, Z  =  4 substitutionally disordered crystal is studied by means of muon spin rotation and relaxation techniques. Measurements carried out under zero, weak transverse and longitudinal fields reveal a temperature dependence of the relaxation parameters strikingly similar to those exhibited by structural glass[Formula: see text]liquid transitions (Bermejo et al 2004 Phys. Rev. B 70 214202; Cabrillo et al 2003 Phys. Rev. B 67 184201). The observed behaviour manifests itself as a square root singularity in the relaxation rates pointing towards some critical temperature which for amorphous systems is located some tens of degrees above that shown as the characteristic transition temperature if studied by thermodynamic means. The implications of such findings in the context of current theoretical approaches concerning the canonical liquid-glass transition are discussed.