Quasi-localized vibrations and phonon damping in glasses

There is ample evidence both from computer simulation and experiments that the structural disorder characterizing glasses and amorphous materials leads to quasi-localized vibrations (QLVs). The effect of these modes on low temperature properties such as heat capacity and conduction or tunnelling can be calculated in the framework of the soft potential model. Recently it has been shown that this concept can be extended to describe the boson peak (BP). By interaction, the density of states of the QLVs is changed to a characteristic shape corresponding to the boson peak in inelastic scattering. The QLVs interact with the sound waves and dampen them. We show that resonant scattering between QLVs and sound waves can describe the strong damping observed experimentally. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.