SrTiO3Displacive Transition Revisited via Coherent X-Ray Diffraction

Abstract

We present a coherent x-ray diffraction study of the antiferrodistortive displacive transition of SrTiO3, a prototypical example of a phase transition for which the critical fluctuations exhibit two length scales and two time scales. From the microbeam x-ray coherent diffraction patterns, we show that the broad (short-length scale) and the narrow (long-length scale) components can be spatially disentangled, due to 100-microm-scale spatial variations of the latter. Moreover, both components exhibit a speckle pattern, which is static on a approximately 10 mn time scale. This gives evidence that the narrow component corresponds to static ordered domains. We interpret the speckles in the broad component as due to a very slow dynamical process, corresponding to the well-known central peak seen in inelastic neutron scattering.