Phonon softening at the incommensurate phase transition of the chargedensity wave compound TbTe3
The possibility for charge density waves (CDW) coexisting with superconductivity in the high Tc cuprates has sparkled a renewed interest in CDW formation mechanism and dynamics. A long standing fundamental controversy that goes back to the early days is the mechanism by which the CDW state is created, either weak or strong electron-phonon coupling (WEPC or SEPC). Experiments show evidences of SEPC in a many CDW systems and those shown in the quasi 2D rare-earth tritelluride TbTe3 are amongst the most convincing ones. Among other features the Kohn anomaly in the phonon spectrum do not behave as expected in the WEPC theory. Previous inelastic X-ray scattering (IXS) experiments reported a large phonon softening at the approach of the phase transition temperature, TC=330K. However our IXS experiments do not show clear-cut evidences of the occurrence of a phonon softening. Indeed the data can rather be explained by an increasing of the phonon damping at the approach of TC and the occurrence of a central peak. In this experiment we want to measure the phonon softening with 5-10 times better energy resolution than IXS in order to disentangle this problem.
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J.E. Lorenzo; BOEHM Martin; LEMEE Marie Helene; MONCEAU Pierre; ORTEGA Luc and RODIERE Pierre. (2020). Phonon softening at the incommensurate phase transition of the chargedensity wave compound TbTe3. Institut Laue-Langevin (ILL) doi:10.5291/ILL-DATA.7-02-188
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