Experimental evidence for the $\omega^4$ tail of the nonphononic spectra of glasses

Abstract

It is now established that glasses feature low-frequency, nonphononic excitations, in addition to phonons that follow Debye's vibrational density of state (VDoS). Extensive computer studies demonstrated that these nonphononic, glassy excitations follow a universal non-Debye VDoS ${\cal D}_{\rm G}(\omega)\!\sim\!\omega^4$, at low frequencies $\omega$. Yet, due to intrinsic difficulties in disentangling ${\cal D}_{\rm G}(\omega)$ from the total VDoS ${\cal D}(\omega)$, which is experimentally accessible through various scattering techniques, the $\omega^4$ tail of ${\cal D}_{\rm G}(\omega)$ lacked direct experimental support. We develop a procedure to extract ${\cal D}_{\rm G}(\omega)$ from the measured ${\cal D}(\omega)$, based on recent advances in understanding low-frequency excitations in glasses, and apply it to available datasets for diverse glasses. The resulting analysis shows that the $\omega^4$ tail of the nonphononic vibrational spectra of glasses is nontrivially consistent with a broad range of experimental observations. It also further supports that ${\cal D}_{\rm G}(\omega)$ makes an additive contribution to ${\cal D}(\omega)$.