Study of temperature dependent atomic correlations in MgB<Subscript>2</Subscript>

We have studied temperature evolution of the local as well as the average crystal structure of MgB<Subscript>2</Subscript> using real-space atomic pair distribution function (PDF) measured by high resolution neutron powder diffraction in a wide temperature range of T=10–600 K. We find small positive correlation factors for the B–B and B–Mg pairs, determined by mean-square displacements (MSD) and the mean-square relative displacements (MSRD). We analyze the PDF using both Einstein and force constant models finding a good agreement between the experimental data and the two models. This indicates that B and Mg atomic correlations are not sensitive to the details of phonon dispersion. Copyright EDP Sciences/Società Italiana di Fisica/Springer-Verlag 2006