Influence of environment fluctuations on incoherent neutron scattering functions

In extending the conventional dynamic models, we consider a simple model to account for the environment fluctuations of particle atoms in a protein system and derive the elastic incoherent structure factor (EISF) and the incoherent scattering correlation function C(Q,t) for both the jump dynamics between sites with fluctuating site interspacing and for the diffusion inside a fluctuating sphere. We find that the EISF of the system (or the normalized elastic intensity) is equal to that in the absence of fluctuations averaged over the distribution of site interspacing or sphere radius a. The scattering correlation function is C(Q,t)= Sigma(n) psi(t), where the average is taken over the Q-dependent effective distribution of relaxation rates lambda(n)(a), and psi(t) is the correlation function of the length a. When psi(t)=1, the relaxation of C(Q,t) is exponential for the jump dynamics between sites [since lambda(n)(a) is independent of a] while it is nonexponential for diffusion inside a sphere.