Vibrational density of states measurements in disordered systems

Abstract

We present a data treatment procedure, based on an iterative technique, properly developed to subtract the multi-phonon contributions from the dynamic structure factor in a self-consistent way. With this technique, we derive the one-phonon vibrational density of states from the dynamic structure factor of different disordered systems, in the framework of the incoherent scattering approximation. We present results on glassy glucose (C6H 12O6), a nearly perfect incoherent scatterer, due to high hydrogen content. The data treatment procedure has been found to work well also for the more complex case of dry and hydrated DNA.