Anharmonicity and quantum effects in thermal expansion of an Invar alloy

We have investigated the anharmonicity and quantum effects in the Invar alloy Fe(64.6)Ni(35.4) that shows anomalously small thermal expansion. We have performed Fe and Ni K-edge extended x-ray-absorption fine-structure spectroscopic measurements and the computational simulations based on the path-integral effective-classical-potential theory. The first nearest-neighbor (NN) shells around Fe show almost no thermal expansion, while those around Ni exhibit meaningful but smaller expansion than that of fcc Ni. At low temperature, the quantum effect is found to play an essentially important role, which is confirmed by comparing the quantum-mechanical simulations to the classical ones. The anharmonicity (asymmetric distribution) clearly exists for all the first NN shells as in normal thermal expansion systems, implying the breakdown of the direct correspondence between thermal expansion and anharmonicity.