PHONONS FROM NEUTRON POWDER DIFFRACTION

The spherically averaged structure function S([vert bar][bold q][vert bar]) obtained from pulsed neutron powder diffraction contains both elastic and inelastic scattering via an integral over energy. The Fourier transformation of S([vert bar][bold q][vert bar]) to real space, as is done in the pair density function (PDF) analysis, regularizes the data, i.e., it accentuates the diffuse scattering. We present a technique which enables the extraction of off-center ([vert bar][bold q][vert bar][ne]0) phonon information from powder diffraction experiments by comparing the experimental PDF with theoretical calculations based on standard interatomic potentials and the crystal symmetry. This procedure [dynamics from powder diffraction] has been [ital successfully] implemented as demonstrated here for two systems, a simple metal fcc Ni and an ionic crystal CaF[sub 2]. Although computationally intensive, this data analysis allows for a phonon based modeling of the PDF, and additionally provides off-center phonon information from neutron powder diffraction. [copyright] [ital 1999] [ital The American Physical Society]