Angular vibrations of cryogenically cooled double-crystal monochromators.

The effect of angular vibrations of the crystals in cryogenically cooled monochromators on the beam performance has been studied theoretically and experimentally. A simple relation between amplitude of the vibrations and size of the focused beam is developed. It is shown that the double-crystal monochromator vibrations affect not only the image size but also the image position along the optical axis. Several methods to measure vibrations with the X-ray beam are explained and analyzed. The methods have been applied to systematically study angular crystal vibrations at monochromators installed at the PETRA III light source. Characteristic values of the amplitudes of angular vibrations for different monochromators are presented.

Nuclear forward scattering of synchrotron radiation by 99Ru.

We measured nuclear forward scattering spectra utilizing the (99)Ru transition, 89.571(3) keV, with a notably mixed E2/M1 multipolarity. The extension of the standard evaluation routines to include mixed multipolarity allows us to extract electric and magnetic hyperfine interactions from (99)Ru-containing compounds. This paves the way for several other high-energy Mössbauer transitions, E ∼ 90 keV. The high energy of such transitions allows for operando nuclear forward scattering studies in real devices.

Hyperfine splitting and room-temperature ferromagnetism of Ni at multimegabar pressure.

Magnetic and elastic properties of Ni metal have been studied up to 260 GPa by nuclear forward scattering of synchrotron radiation with the 67.4 keV Mössbauer transition of 61Ni. The observed magnetic hyperfine splitting confirms the ferromagnetic state of Ni up to 260 GPa, the highest pressure where magnetism in any material has been observed so far. Ab initio calculations reveal that the pressure evolution of the hyperfine field, which features a maximum in the range of 100 to 225 GPa, is a relativistic effect. The Debye energy obtained from the Lamb-Mössbauer factor increases from 33 meV at ambient pressure to 60 meV at 100 GPa. The change of this energy over volume compression is well described by a Grüneisen parameter of 2.09.

Milli-electronvolt monochromatization of hard X-rays with a sapphire backscattering monochromator.

A sapphire backscattering monochromator with 1.1 (1) meV bandwidth for hard X-rays (20-40 keV) is reported. The optical quality of several sapphire crystals has been studied and the best crystal was chosen to work as the monochromator. The small energy bandwidth has been obtained by decreasing the crystal volume impinged upon by the beam and by choosing the crystal part with the best quality. The monochromator was tested at the energies of the nuclear resonances of (121)Sb at 37.13 keV, (125)Te at 35.49 keV, (119)Sn at 23.88 keV, (149)Sm at 22.50 keV and (151)Eu at 21.54 keV. For each energy, specific reflections with sapphire temperatures in the 150-300 K region were chosen. Applications to nuclear inelastic scattering with these isotopes are demonstrated.

Confined phonons in glasses. A study by nuclear inelastic absorption and Raman scattering.

We have applied nuclear inelastic absorption (NIA) to the molecular glass former dibutyl phthalate/ferrocene, both in bulk and in nanoporous matrices having pore sizes of 50 and 25 A. The quantity g(E)/E(2), where g(E) is the vibrational density of states (VDOS) of the iron atoms, exhibits a pronounced maximum around 2 meV. Confinement in pores leads to a suppression of the VDOS below 1.5 meV, independent of the pore size. The influence of local interactions at the pore wall was assessed using Raman scattering. Our observations are discussed in the light of experimental and theoretical results on nanoparticles and for the Boson peak.

Vibrational properties of nanograins and interfaces in nanocrystalline materials.

The vibrational dynamics of nanocrystalline Fe(90)Zr(7)B(3) was studied at various phases of crystallization. The density of phonon states (DOS) of the nanograins was separated from that of the interfaces for a wide range of grain sizes and interface thicknesses. The DOS of the nanograins does not vary with their size and down to 2 nm grains still closely resembles that of the bulk. The anomalous enhancement of the phonon states at low and high energies originates from the DOS of the interfaces and scales linearly to their atomic fraction.

Nuclear forward scattering for high energy mössbauer transitions.

We have studied nuclear forward scattering of synchrotron radiation for the 67.41 keV resonance of 61Ni using a silicon crystal monochromator with low-index reflections and a multielement detector. This approach can be extended to other high-energy Mössbauer transitions and does not pose any restrictions on the sample environment. Under conditions of large sample thickness and short nuclear lifetime, typical for work with high-energy nuclear resonances, the nuclear decay follows a universal dependence where both thickness effects and hyperfine interactions are taken into account by time scaling.

Collective nature of the boson peak and universal transboson dynamics of glasses.

Using probe molecules with resonant nuclei and nuclear inelastic scattering, we are able to measure the density of states exclusively for collective motions with a correlation length of more than approximately 20 A. Such spectra exhibit an excess of low-energy modes (boson peak). This peak behaves in the same way as that observed by conventional methods. This shows that a significant part of the modes constituting the boson peak is of collective character. At energies above the boson peak, the reduced density of states of the collective motions universally exhibits an exponential decrease.