Interaction induced light scattering in orientationally disordered crystals: the translational phonon region

We have derived an expression for the light scattering spectrum of a crystal in which the mechanically regular sites are occupied by point polarizable orientationally disordered molecules when the polarizabilities are assumed to depend on the positions of the surrounding atoms (interaction induced polarizability fluctuations).

Owing to the ‘electrical’ disorder properties of the system all phonons can contribute to the anisotropic scattering measured in all polarization configuration with wavevector, branch index and polarization dependent coefficients. Assuming short range interaction induced polarizabilities we show that the temperature reduced intensity I(ω)/[n(ω) + 1] is given by a superposition of the Brillouin zone centre symmetry ‘projected’ density of states with polarization dependent coefficients. These coefficients are found to be essentially frequency independent for all the projections, exception made for those corresponding to the acoustic phonons. For the acoustic branches the coefficients vanish in a first approximation. They can however be treated on more rigorous grounds and, as already found by other authors, their contribution is proportional to the density of states multiplied by ω².

In addition zone centre (k?0) totally symmetric phonons can also be present in the ‘isotropic’ term (which appears only in the polarized VV configuration).

A procedure is suggested to obtain the total density of states from the spectra measured in different polarization configurations.