PHYSICA A-STATISTICAL MECHANICS AND ITS APPLICATIONS
Volume | Issue number
390 | 18-19
Pages (from-to)
3061-3068
Organisations
Faculty of Science (FNWI) - Institute of Physics (IoP) - Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute (WZI)
Abstract
We study the vibrational spectrum and the low-energy modes of a three-dimensional colloidal crystal using confocal microscopy. This is done in a two-dimensional cut through a three-dimensional crystal. We find that the observed density of states is incompatible with the standard Debye form in either two or three dimensions. These results are confirmed by numerical simulations. We show that an effective theory for the projections of the modes onto the two-dimensional cut describes the experimental and simulation data in a satisfactory way.
