Data from: The origin of sound damping in amorphous solids: Defects and beyond

Comprehending sound damping is integral to understanding the anomalous low
temperature properties of glasses. After decades of theoretical and
experimental studies, Rayleigh scattering scaling of the sound attenuation
coefficient with frequency Γ∼ωd+1, became generally accepted when quantum
and finite temperature effects can be neglected. Rayleigh scaling invokes
a picture of scattering from defects. However, it is unclear how to define
glass defects, or even if defects are necessary for Rayleigh scaling. Here
we determine a particle level contribution to sound damping in the
Rayleigh scaling regime. We find that there are areas in the glass that
contribute more to sound damping than other areas over a range of
frequencies, which allows us to define defects. We show that over a range
of glass stability, sound damping scales linearly with the fraction of
particles in the defects. However, sound is still attenuated in
ultra-stable glasses where no defects are identified. We show that sound
damping in these glasses is due to nearly uniformly distributed non-affine
microscopic forces that arise after macroscopic deformations of
non-centrosymetric structures. To fully understand sound attenuation in
glasses, one has to consider contributions from defects and a defect-free
background, which represents a new paradigm of sound damping in glasses.