High Frequency dynamics in metallic glasses

Using Inelastic X-ray Scattering we studied the collective dynamics of the glassy alloy Ni$_{33}$Zr$_{67}$ in the first pseudo Brillouin zone, an energy-momentum region still unexplored in metallic glasses. We determine key properties such as the momentum transfer dependence of the sound velocity and of the acoustic damping, discussing the results in the general context of recently proposed pictures for acoustic dynamics in glasses. Specifically, we demonstrate the existence in this strong glass of well defined (in the Ioffe Regel sense) acoustic-like excitations well above the Boson Peak energy.Comment: 4 pages, 4 .eps figures, accepted in Phys. Rev. Let

A finite-temperature liquid-quasicrystal transition in a lattice model

We consider a tiling model of the two-dimensional square-lattice, where each site is tiled with one of the sixteen Wang tiles. The ground states of this model are all quasi-periodic. The systems undergoes a disorder to quasi-periodicity phase transition at finite temperature. Introducing a proper order-parameter, we study the system at criticality, and extract the critical exponents characterizing the transition. The exponents obtained are consistent with hyper-scaling

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.Comment: To be published in Europhys. Let

Sound-propagation gap in fluid mixtures

We discuss the behavior of the extended sound modes of a dense binary hard-sphere mixture. In a dense simple hard-sphere fluid the Enskog theory predicts a gap in the sound propagation at large wave vectors. In a binary mixture the gap is only present for low concentrations of one of the two species. At intermediate concentrations sound modes are always propagating. This behavior is not affected by the mass difference of the two species, but it only depends on the packing fractions. The gap is absent when the packing fractions are comparable and the mixture structurally resembles a metallic glass.Comment: Published; withdrawn since ordering in archive gives misleading impression of new publicatio

The structure of fluid trifluoromethane and methylfluoride

We present hard X-ray and neutron diffraction measurements on the polar fluorocarbons HCF3 and H3CF under supercritical conditions and for a range of molecular densities spanning about a factor of ten. The Levesque-Weiss-Reatto inversion scheme has been used to deduce the site-site potentials underlying the measured partial pair distribution functions. The orientational correlations between adjacent fluorocarbon molecules -- which are characterized by quite large dipole moments but no tendency to form hydrogen bonds -- are small compared to a highly polar system like fluid hydrogen chloride. In fact, the orientational correlations in HCF3 and H3CF are found to be nearly as small as those of fluid CF4, a fluorocarbon with no dipole moment.Comment: 11 pages, 9 figure

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

Anharmonicity, vibrational instability and Boson peak in glasses

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 $\omega_c$, 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, $\omega_b$ which is a function of interaction strength. The excess of the DOS over the Debye value is $\propto\omega^4$ at low frequencies and linear in $\omega$ in the interval $\omega_b \ll \omega \ll \omega_c$. Our results are in an excellent agreement with recent experimental studies.Comment: LaTeX, 8 pages, 6 figure

Role of spinon and spinon singlet pair excitations on phase transitions in d−waved-wave superconductors

We examine the roles of massless Dirac spinon and spin singlet pair excitations on the phase transition in $d-wave$ superconductors. Although the massless spinon excitations in the presence of the spin singlet pair excitations do not alter the nature of the phase transition at $T = 0$, that is, the XY universality class, they are seen to induce an additional attractive interaction potential between vortices, further stabilizing vortex-antivortex pairs at low temperature for lightly doped high $T_c$ samples.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur