Correlated Motions in Glasses Studied by Coherent Inelastic Neutron Scattering

Abstract

Coherent inelastic neutron scattering provides detailed information about the correlated atomic displacements in the vibrational modes of a glass. As an example, we show the wave-vector dependence of the scattering function of vitreous Si${\mathrm{O}}_{2}$ corresponding to different peaks in the one-phonon density of states. Pending the availability of results from computer simulations, we give a qualitative comparison with the Sen-Thorpe model.