It is found that in some metals an intrinsic localized mode may exist with frequency above the top of the phonon spectrum. The necessary condition, requiring sufficiently high ratio of quartic to cubic anharmonicity may be fulfilled because of screening of the interaction between ions by free electrons. Starting from the known literature values of the pair potentials we have found that in Ni and Nb the derived localized mode condition is fulfilled. MD simulations of the nonlinear dynamics of Ni and Nb confirmed that high frequency ILMs may exist in these metals.

Abstract. MD simulations of recoil processes following the scattering of X-rays or neutrons have been performed in ionic crystals and metals. At small energies (<10 eV) the recoil can induce intrinsic localized modes (ILMs) and linear local modes associated with them. As a rule, the frequencies of such modes are located in the gaps of the phonon spectrum. However, in metallic Ni, Nb and Fe, due to the renormalization of atomic interactions by free electrons, the frequencies mentioned are found to be positioned above the phonon spectrum. It has been shown that these ILMs are highly mobile and can efficiently transfer a concentrated vibrational energy to large distances along crystallographic directions. If the recoil energy exceeds tens of eVs, vacancies and interstitials can be formed, being strongly dependent on the direction of the recoil momentum. In NaCl-type lattices the recoil in (110) direction can produce a vacancy and a crowdion, while in the case of a recoil in (100) and in (111) directions a bi-vacancy and a crowdion can be formed.

No abstract

An expression for the amplitude of a pulse of synchrotron radiation ͑SR͒ coherently scattered in forward direction by a randomly oriented Mössbauer absorber is derived from the theory of ␥ optics. It is assumed that the hyperfine splittings present in the Mössbauer nuclei can be described in the framework of the spin-Hamiltonian formalism. In the general case of a thick Mössbauer sample, which consists of randomly oriented paramagnetic iron-containing molecules ͑for example, a frozen solution of a 57 Fe protein͒ in an applied magnetic field, the response of this sample on an incident monochromatic and fully polarized SR beam cannot be given analytically because of the integrations involved. The way to evaluate nuclear forward-scattering spectra for this general case numerically is outlined and results of calculations with a corresponding program package called SYNFOS are shown and compared with experimental results obtained by measurements of the high-spin iron ͑II͒ ''picket-fence'' porphyrin ͓Fe͑CH 3 COO͒TP piv P͔ Ϫ in an applied field of 6 T.

The decay of the nuclear exciton (immobile collective excitation), created by a pulse of synchrotron radiation, is analyzed. It is shown that in the later phases of the decay, the exciton becomes localized at the sample's frontal surface. Inside the sample, the secondary gamma-quanta, emitted by the contracting exciton, are converted into polaritons (mobile nuclear excitations) characterized by different frequencies and equal group velocities. On the sample's back surface, the polariton interference causes a beating structure of the transmitted radiation, observed in experiments.