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Updated: Jul 16, 2026

Cooling Rate Dependent Ellipsometry Measurements to Determine the Dynamics of Thin Glassy Films
Published on: January 26, 2016
Effect of nuclear quadrupole interactions on the dynamics of two-level systems in glasses
A L Burin1, I Ya Polishchuk, P Fulde
1Department of Chemistry, Tulane University, New Orleans, Louisiana 70118, USA.
Abstract:
The standard tunneling model describes quite satisfactorily the properties of amorphous solids at temperatures T < 1K in terms of an ensemble of two-level systems including the logarithmic temperature dependence of the dielectric constant. Yet, experiments have shown that at ultralow temperatures T< 5 mK such a temperature behavior breaks down and the dielectric constant becomes temperature independent (plateau effect). In this Letter we suggest an explanation of this behavior exploiting the effect of the nuclear quadrupole interaction on tunneling. We also predict that the application of a sufficiently large magnetic field B> 10T should restore the logarithmic dependence because of the suppression of the nuclear quadrupole interaction.
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