Thermal Conductivity of Glasses Induced by Nuclear Quadrupole Interaction at Ultra Low Temperatures

Abstract

It is investigated how nuclear degrees of freedom of tunneling system (TS) inherent in amorphous solids influence its acoustic properties. It was shown in our previous papers that below 10 mK nuclear quadrupole interaction breaks down the coherent tunneling. This phenomenon results in appearance of the quasi-gap in the distribution function for the tunneling amplitude splitting. The quasi-gap is responsible for the plateau in the temperature dependence of the real part of a dielectric permittivity or speed of sound. In this paper we are interested in ultrasonic absorption and thermal conductivity which are intimately connected. We demonstrate that there exists a temperature interval in a millikelvin region where the sound absorption behavior changes drastically from the behavior predicted by the standard tunneling model (STM). In particular, the sound absorption increases approximately by an order of magnitude. Since in the millikelvin region the heat transport is due to acoustic phonons, the thermal conductivity also should demonstrate a strong increase as compared to standard tunneling model. The application of a strong magnetic field is known to restore the coherent tunneling and the standard distribution for the tunneling splitting amplitude. Thus, one can expect that in a strong magnetic field the thermal conductivity should drop in the temperature interval where the coherent tunneling was initially destroyed.