Phys.org January 24, 2023 A common feature of glasses is the “boson peak”, observed as an excess in the heat capacity over the crystal or as an additional peak in the terahertz vibrational spectrum. The microscopic origins of this peak are not well understood; the emergence of locally ordered structures has been put forward as a possible candidate. An international team of researchers (UK, Slovenia, Japan) has shown that depolarised Raman scattering in liquids consisting of highly symmetric molecules can be used to isolate the boson peak, allowing its detailed observation from the liquid into the glass. The boson peak […]