Partial phonon density of states of Fe in an icosahedral quasicrystalAl62Cu25.557Fe12.5by inelastic nuclear-resonant absorption of 14.41-keV synchrotron radiation

We use a recently developed method based on inelastic nuclear-resonant absorption of x rays to measure the iron-partial vibrational density of states (VDOS) in a quasicrystal. The results differ from those obtained by inelastic neutron scattering in an astounding way: whereas the neutron results exhibit a very smooth and featureless behavior, the iron-partial VDOS is strongly peaked at one energy value.