Non-Debye normalization of the glass vibrational density of states in mildly densified silicate glasses

The evolution of the boson peak with densification at medium densification rates (up to 2.3%) in silicate glasses was followed through heat capacity measurements and low frequency Raman scattering. It is shown that the decrease of the boson peak induced by densification does not conform to that expected from a continuous medium; rather it follows a two step behaviour. The comparison of the heat capacity data with the Raman data shows that the light-vibration coupling coefficient is almost unaffected in this densification regime. These results are discussed in relation to the inhomogeneity of the glass elastic network at the nanometre scale.

Elastic properties of viruses

Viruses are compact biological nanoparticles whose elastic and dynamical properties are hardly known. Inelastic (Brillouin) light scattering was used to characterize these properties, from microcrystals of the Satellite Tobacco Mosaic Virus, a nearly spherical plant virus of 17-nm diameter. Longitudinal sound velocities in wet and dry Satellite Tobacco Mosaic Virus crystals were determined and compared to that of the well-known protein crystal, lysozyme. Localized vibrational modes of the viral particles (i.e., particle modes) were sought in the relevant frequency ranges, as derived assuming the viruses as full free nanospheres. Despite very favorable conditions, regarding virus concentration and expected low damping in dry microcrystals, no firm evidence of virus particle modes could be detected.

Reexamination of the evolution of the dynamic susceptibility of the glass former glycerol

The dielectric data of glycerol compiled by Lunkenheimer et al. [Contemp. Phys. 41, 15 (2000)] are reanalyzed within a phenomenological approach on the one hand, and within mode coupling theory (MCT), on the other. We present a complete interpolation of the dielectric data covering 17 decades in frequencies. The crossover temperature extracted from the phenomenological analysis of the slow response at low temperatures and defined by the emergence of the excess wing upon cooling agrees well with the critical temperature extracted from a MCT analysis of the dynamics at high temperatures including data that were not used in the first MCT analysis of glycerol by Lunkenheimer et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 77, 318 (1996)]. The crossover temperature is found to be T(c)=288+/-3 K, which is significantly higher than previously reported. Extracting the nonergodicity parameter f, the characteristic anomaly is only found when 1-f is inspected, since f is very close to 1. No difference for the evolution of the dynamic susceptibility is observed for the nonfragile system glycerol with respect to fragile glass formers provided that the evolution of the dynamics is studied as a function of the correlation time tau(alpha).