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Free keywords:
glass, organic compounds, amorphous state, tunnelling, magnetic field effects, dielectric properties, nuclear electric moment
Abstract:
At temperatures below a few Kelvin the properties of amorphous solids are dominated by atomic tunneling systems. In the millikelvin range, surprising magnetic field effects in the dielectric properties of several non‐magnetic multicomponent glasses were observed. The magnetic field dependence of the dielectric properties is caused by tunneling particles carrying a nuclear quadrupole moment. In this work, we present dielectric polarization echo measurements on partially deuterated amorphous glycerol. The observed dependencies of the echo amplitude on magnetic field and decay time are shown. We discuss the observations in terms of an effective coupling between the quadrupole states and the tunneling process and find very good agreement with the measurements. This allows us first insights into the microscopic nature of the atomic tunneling systems in this material.