Anomalous lattice dynamics of the elemental superconductor niobium

DOI

Phonon lifetimes in BCS superconductors provide information on the details of the electron-phonon coupling mechanism. In 2008 high-resolution neutron inelastic scattering experiments revealed unexpected anomalies in the lifetimes of transverse acoustic modes in the elemental superconductors Pb and Nb. These experiments were performed using a resonant spin-echo technique. To date no quantitative explanation for these anomalies has been forthcoming. Here we propose to exploit the unprecedented high-resolution of LET to investigate phonon lifetimes effects arising from electron-phonon coupling in Nb. In addition to providing an important check of the surprising behaviour of the acoustic modes, our experiments will provide a high-resolution survey of the longitudinal acoustic modes where new features may be expected.

Identifier
DOI https://doi.org/10.5286/ISIS.E.83551996
Metadata Access https://icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk/oaipmh/request?verb=GetRecord&metadataPrefix=oai_datacite&identifier=oai:icatisis.esc.rl.ac.uk:inv/83551996
Provenance
Creator Ms Sonja Holm-Dahlin; Dr David Voneshen; Dr Keith Refson; Professor Des McMorrow; Professor Christian Ruegg; Dr Toby Perring; Professor Andrew Boothroyd; Ms Rebecca Fair
Publisher ISIS Neutron and Muon Source
Publication Year 2019
Rights CC-BY Attribution 4.0 International; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
OpenAccess true
Contact isisdata(at)stfc.ac.uk
Representation
Resource Type Dataset
Discipline Natural Sciences; Physics
Temporal Coverage Begin 2016-12-12T10:00:00Z
Temporal Coverage End 2016-12-15T10:00:00Z