Ice Ih revisited: No proton tunneling observed in a quasielastic neutron scattering experiment

Abstract

A large broadening ($\ensuremath{\sim}0.4\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\mathrm{meV}$) of quasielastic neutron scattering (QENS) signal in ${\mathrm{H}}_{2}\mathrm{O}$ ice ${I}_{h}$ at $T=5\phantom{\rule{0.16em}{0ex}}\mathrm{K}$ was observed by Bove et al. [Phys. Rev. Lett. 103, 165901 (2009)] and explained by a model of concerted proton tunneling. This result was rather unexpected, as prior studies never showed significant mobility in water at low temperatures and ambient pressure. There were a few attempts of theoretical understanding of the effect. Recent path-integral simulations as well as quantum lattice-gauge theory supported the possibility of the collective tunneling of protons in ice ${I}_{h}$, however other studies stated that concerted tunneling in ice ${I}_{h}$ should have very low frequency. Here, we report on QENS measurements of ${\mathrm{H}}_{2}\mathrm{O}$ ice ${I}_{h}$ at 1.8 and 5 K by using neutron scattering spectrometers with the energy resolution similar to and four times better than the energy resolution in the original experiment of Bove and co-workers. We did not observe any QENS broadening, and the measured spectra for the ice ${I}_{h}$ and the reference vanadium sample were almost identical. Therefore, we conclude that there is no proton tunneling in ice ${I}_{h}$ at temperatures down to 1.8 K measurable on an energy scale of 3.5 $\ensuremath{\mu}\mathrm{eV}$ and above. The literature data on low-temperature heat capacity of ice ${I}_{h}$ support this conclusion.