High frequency sound waves in vitreous silica

We report a molecular dynamics simulation study of the sound waves in vitreous silica in the mesoscopic exchanged momentum range. The calculated dynamical structure factors are in quantitative agreement with recent experimental inelastic neutron and x-ray scattering data. The analysis of the longitudinal and transverse current spectra allows to discriminate between opposite interpretations of the existing experimental data in favour of the propagating nature of the high frequency sound waves.Comment: 4 pages, Revtex, 4 ps figures; to be published in Phys. Rev. Lett., February 198

Bulk and shear relaxation in glasses and highly viscous liquids

The ratio between the couplings of a relaxational process to compression and shear, respectively, is calculated in the Eshelby picture of structural rearrangements within a surrounding elastic matrix, assuming a constant density of stable structures in distortion space. The result is compared to experimental data for the low-temperature tunneling states in glasses and to Prigogine-Defay data at the glass transition from the literature.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, 53 references; version after understanding the Prigogine-Defay ratio at the glass transition in the accompanying paper arXiv:1203.3555 [cond-mat.dis-nn

Scaling the Temperature-dependent Boson Peak of Vitreous Silica with the high-frequency Bulk Modulus derived from Brillouin Scattering Data

The position and strength of the boson peak in silica glass vary considerably with temperature $T$. Such variations cannot be explained solely with changes in the Debye energy. New Brillouin scattering measurements are presented which allow determining the $T$-dependence of unrelaxed acoustic velocities. Using a velocity based on the bulk modulus, scaling exponents are found which agree with the soft-potential model. The unrelaxed bulk modulus thus appears to be a good measure for the structural evolution of silica with $T$ and to set the energy scale for the soft potentials.Comment: Accepted for publication in Physical Review Letter

Interaction of quasilocal harmonic modes and boson peak in glasses

The direct proportionality relation between the boson peak maximum in glasses, $\omega_b$, and the Ioffe-Regel crossover frequency for phonons, $\omega_d$, is established. For several investigated materials $\omega_b = (1.5\pm 0.1)\omega_d$. At the frequency $\omega_d$ the mean free path of the phonons $l$ becomes equal to their wavelength because of strong resonant scattering on quasilocal harmonic oscillators. Above this frequency phonons cease to exist. We prove that the established correlation between $\omega_b$ and $\omega_d$ holds in the general case and is a direct consequence of bilinear coupling of quasilocal oscillators with the strain field.Comment: RevTex, 4 pages, 1 figur

Bronze Wheat

The years following the severe losses in yield of winter wheat due to stem rust in 1962 and 1963 have seen the release for production of many varieties that resist stem rust. The South Dakota Agricultural Experiment Station released Hume and Winoka and also joined in testing and release of rust resistant varieties developed in neighboring states. The breeding objective in the South Dakota program has been to select early, especially hardy, medium to short strawed lines having resistance to both stem and leaf rust, of good milling and baking qualities and of good yield and test weight. The success of such a program should enable growers to use fall sown wheat ever farther northward and eastward in this state. That such an objective is especially difficult is apparent from the fact that no one has yet developed a variety having to a significant degree all of those qualities. The ability to tiller heavily to fill out a stand depleted by winter losses also is an important trait

Phonons from neutron powder diffraction

The spherically averaged structure function \soq obtained from pulsed neutron powder diffraction contains both elastic and inelastic scattering via an integral over energy. The Fourier transformation of \soq to real space, as is done in the pair density function (PDF) analysis, regularizes the data, i.e. it accentuates the diffuse scattering. We present a technique which enables the extraction of off-center phonon information from powder diffraction experiments by comparing the experimental PDF with theoretical calculations based on standard interatomic potentials and the crystal symmetry. This procedure (dynamics from powder diffraction(DPD)) has been successfully implemented for two systems, a simple metal, fcc Ni, and an ionic crystal, CaF$_{2}$. Although computationally intensive, this data analysis allows for a phonon based modeling of the PDF, and additionally provides off-center phonon information from powder neutron diffraction

Observation of Umklapp processes in non-crystalline materials

Umklapp processes are known to exist in cristalline materials, where they control important properties such as thermal conductivity, heat capacity and electrical conductivity. In this work we report the provocative observation of Umklapp processes in a non-periodical system, namely liquid Lithium. The lack of a well defined periodicity seems then not to prevent the existence of these scattering processes mechanisms provided that the local order of the systems i.e. the maxima of the static structure factor supply the equivalent of a reciprocal lattice vector in the case of cristalline materials.Comment: 13 pages P

Dielectric and thermal relaxation in the energy landscape

We derive an energy landscape interpretation of dielectric relaxation times in undercooled liquids, comparing it to the traditional Debye and Gemant-DiMarzio-Bishop pictures. The interaction between different local structural rearrangements in the energy landscape explains qualitatively the recently observed splitting of the flow process into an initial and a final stage. The initial mechanical relaxation stage is attributed to hopping processes, the final thermal or structural relaxation stage to the decay of the local double-well potentials. The energy landscape concept provides an explanation for the equality of thermal and dielectric relaxation times. The equality itself is once more demonstrated on the basis of literature data for salol.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, 41 references, Workshop Disordered Systems, Molveno 2006, submitted to Philosophical Magazin

A Solvable Model of a Glass

An analytically tractable model is introduced which exhibits both, a glass--like freezing transition, and a collection of double--well configurations in its zero--temperature potential energy landscape. The latter are generally believed to be responsible for the anomalous low--temperature properties of glass-like and amorphous systems via a tunneling mechanism that allows particles to move back and forth between adjacent potential energy minima. Using mean--field and replica methods, we are able to compute the distribution of asymmetries and barrier--heights of the double--well configurations {\em analytically}, and thereby check various assumptions of the standard tunneling model. We find, in particular, strong correlations between asymmetries and barrier--heights as well as a collection of single--well configurations in the potential energy landscape of the glass--forming system --- in contrast to the assumptions of the standard model. Nevertheless, the specific heat scales linearly with temperature over a wide range of low temperatures.Comment: 11 pages, latex, including 5 figures, talk presented at the XIV Sitges Conferenc