Temperature dependence of phonons in FeGe_2

Abstract

Inelastic neutron scattering was used to measure phonon dispersions in a single crystal of FeGe_2 with the C16 structure at 300, 500, and 635 K. Phonon densities of states (DOS) were also measured on polycrystalline FeGe_2 from 325 to 1050 K, and the Fe partial DOS was obtained from polycrystalline ^(57)FeGe_2 at 300 K using nuclear resonant inelastic x-ray scattering. The dominant feature in the temperature dependence of the phonon spectrum is thermal broadening of high-energy modes. The energy shifts of the low- and high-energy parts of the spectrum were almost the same. DFT calculations performed with the quasiharmonic approximation gave results in moderate agreement with the experimental thermal energy shifts, although the isobaric Grüneisen parameter calculated from the quasiharmonic model was smaller than that from measurements. The thermal broadening of the phonon spectrum and dispersions, especially at high energies, indicates a cubic anharmonicity to second order that should also induce phonon shifts. We show that different anharmonic contributions cancel out, giving average phonon shifts in moderate agreement to calculations with the quasiharmonic approximation. The different parts of the large phonon contribution to the entropy are separated for FeGe_2, showing modest but interpretable anharmonic contributions.

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