2005/06/15 by Duane C. Wallace, Wallace, Duane C., Giulia De Lorenzi-Venneri +3
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology · Chemistry · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Chemical and Physical Studies #FOS: Physical sciences #Material Dynamics and Properties #Materials Science (cond-mat.mtrl-sci) #Statistical Mechanics (cond-mat.stat-mech) #Surfactants and Colloidal Systems #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0506369
openalex publication_date 2005/06/15 · arxiv created 2005/09/08 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
The Brillouin peak appears in the dynamic structure factor S(q,w), and the dispersion curve is the Brillouin peak frequency as function of q. The theoretical function underlying S(q,w) is the density autocorrelation function F(q,t). A broadly successful description of time correlation functions is provided by mode coupling theory, which expresses F(q,t) in terms of processes through which the density fluctuations decay. In contrast, vibration-transit (V-T) theory is a Hamiltonian formulation of monatomic liquid dynamics in which the motion consists of vibrations within a many-particle random valley, interspersed with nearly instantaneous transits between such valleys. Here, V-T theory is applied to S(q,w). The theoretical vibrational contribution to S(q,w) is the sum of independent scattering cross sections from the normal vibrational modes, and contains no explicit reference to decay processes. For a theoretical model of liquid Na, we show that the vibrational contribution with no adjustable parameters gives an excellent account of the Brillouin peak dispersion curve, as compared to MD calculations and to experimental data.