Anisotropic glass-like properties in tetragonal disordered crystals

TL;DR

This paper investigates the anisotropic glass-like low-temperature properties of tetragonal disordered crystals, extending the two-level systems model to describe their thermal and acoustic behaviors.

Contribution

It introduces a model for two-level systems interacting with arbitrary strain fields to explain anisotropic glass-like properties in tetragonal disordered crystals.

Findings

Demonstrates anisotropic thermal and acoustic properties in tetragonal crystals.

Extends the two-level systems model to anisotropic crystal symmetries.

Provides theoretical calculations matching experimental observations.

Abstract

The low temperature acoustic and thermal properties of amorphous, glassy materials are remarkably similar. All these properties are described theoretically with reasonable quantitative accuracy by assuming that the amorphous solid contains dynamical defects that can be described at low temperatures as an ensemble of two-level systems (TLS), but the deep nature of these TLSs is not clarified yet. Moreover, glassy properties were found also in disordered crystals, quasicrystals, and even perfect crystals with a large number of atoms in the unit cell. In crystals, the glassy properties are not universal, like in amorphous materials, and also exhibit anisotropy. Recently it was proposed a model for the interaction of two-level systems with arbitrary strain fields (Phys. Rev. B 75, 64202, 2007), which was used to calculate the thermal properties of nanoscopic membranes at low temperatures. The model is also suitable for the description of anisotropic crystals. We describe here the results of the calculation of anisotropic glass-like properties in crystals of various lattice symmetries, emphasizing the tetragonal symmetry.