Phonon spectra in one-dimensional quasicrystals

Abstract

The propagation of phonons in one-dimensional quasicrystals is investigated. We use the projection method which has been recently proposed to generate almost periodic tilings of the line. We define a natural Laplace operator on these structures, which models phonon (and also tight-binding electron) propagation. The selfsimilarity properties of the spectrum are discussed, as well as some characteristic features of the eigenstates, which are neither extended nor localized. The long-wavelength limit is examined in more detail; it is argued that one is the lower critical dimension for this type of models.