Investigating meV-scale Equilibrium Atomic Dynamics with X-Rays: focus on disordered materials

TL;DR

This paper reviews the use of meV-resolved inelastic x-ray scattering (IXS) for studying atomic dynamics in disordered materials, highlighting its advantages over neutron scattering in small samples and high-resolution measurements.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of IXS techniques, applications to disordered materials, and compares IXS with inelastic neutron scattering, emphasizing its unique capabilities.

Findings

IXS allows measurements in very small samples with high energy resolution.

IXS avoids kinematic constraints of neutron scattering, enabling high-quality data on disordered materials.

Sub-meV resolution scans are possible at high energy transfer and small momentum transfers.

Abstract

This paper reviews non-resonant meV-resolved inelastic x-ray scattering (IXS) as a complementary method to inelastic neutron scattering (INS). Two aspects of IXS that are notable in this context are (1) that IXS allows straightforward measurements of phonons in small (sub-mm, and even $\sim 0.01$ mm) samples with $\sim 1$ meV resolution and excellent Q resolution and (2) that IXS avoids the kinematic constraints of INS. The first allows both new geometries (thin films, diamond anvil cells) and easy access to new materials, while the second allows high quality data on disordered materials, such as scans with sub-meV resolution to arbitrarily high energy transfer become possible , even at momentum transfers as small as 1/nm. The review briefly discusses the spectrometers and compares the practical forms for the dynamic structure factor for crystals, glasses and liquids. This is followed by a longer review of work on liquids and then shorter discussion of work on glasses, crystals, and discussion of specific geometries. This paper complements the longer introduction/review of IXS at arxiv:1504.01098 .