Density of Vibrational States of a Hyperquenched Glass

The vibrational density of states of a hyperquenched and an annealed glass has been measured using nuclear inelastic scattering. The hyperquenched sample shows a higher number of vibrational states in the low-energy region with respect to the annealed glass. It reveals, however, lower density and sound velocity and, therefore, smaller Debye energy. After rescaling the energy axes in Debye energy units and area renormalization, the density of states of both samples becomes identical. Thus, the effect of quenching is described by the transformation of the continuous medium.