A study of some temperature effects on the phonons in aluminium by use of cold neutrons

Using the cold neutron scattering technique about 300 phonons have been determined in a single aluminium crystal at room temperature to define 10 pairs of dispersion curves, Investigations have been made of the variation of frequencies, phonon line widths and multi-phonon spectra in the temperature range 293 < T < 932 K. For a particular direction in the crystal lattice it is shown that the frequencies vary about 15 % over this temperature range The line widths are of such a magnitude that the derived phonon mean free paths vary from about 5 phonon wave lengths at 600 K to about 1.5 phonon wave lengths at 930 K. The observed multiphonon spectra are found to agree with calculated differential cross sections in the incoherent approximation