Normal vibrations in gallium arsenide

The triple axis crystal spectrometer at Chalk River has been used to observe coherent slow neutron scattering from a single crystal of pure gallium arsenide at 296oK. The frequencies of normal modes of vibration propagating in the [ζ00], (ζζζ], and (0ζζ] crystal directions have been determined with a precision of between 1 and 2·5 per cent. A limited number of normal modes have also been studied at 95 and 184oK. Considerable difficulty was experienced in obtaining welt resolved neutron peaks corresponding to the two non-degenerate optic modes for very small wave-vector, particularly at 296oK. However, from a comparison of results obtained under various experimental conditions at several different points in reciprocal space, frequencies (units 1012 c/s) for these modes (at 296oK) have been assigned: T 8·02±0·08 and L 8·55±02. Other specific normal modes, with their measured frequencies are (a) (1,0,0): TO 7·56 ± 008, TA 2·36 ± 0·015, LO 7·22 ± 0·15, LA 6·80 ± 0·06; (b) (0·5, 0·5, 0·5): TO 7·84 ± 0·12, TA 1·86 ± 0·02, LO 7·15 ± 0·07, LA 6·26 ± 0·10; (c) (0, 0·65, 0·65): optic 8·08 ±0·13, 7·54 ± 0·12 and 6·57 ± 0·11, acoustic 5·58 ± 0·08, 3·42 · 0·06 and 2·36 ± 004. These results are generally slightly lower than the corresponding frequencies for germanium. An analysis in terms of various modifications of the dipole approximation model has been carried out. A feature of this analysis is that the charge on the gallium atom appears to be very small, about +0·04 e. The frequency distribution function has been derived from one of the force models. (author)