Dynamic structure factor of liquid mercury

The low momentum dynamics of liquid mercury has been investigated by means of inelastic neutron scattering and molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. Due to the rather high incoherent cross-section and the high mass of mercury, the measured dynamic structure factor is dominated by the self-correlation function which has been studied in details. The low momentum collective dynamics are also made accessible by the very good energy resolution of the experiment. Collective modes are clearly visible against the incoherent scattering up to a momentum transfer of 0.6 (A) over circle (-1). The self-dynamics, as resulting from either the experiment and MD simulations, turn out to be characterized by two time scales. (C) 2002 Published by Elsevier Science B.V.