Anomalous transverse optical phonons in SnTe and PbTe

We present a study of the soft transverse optic phonon mode in SnTe in comparison to the corresponding mode in PbTe using inelastic neutron scattering and ab initio lattice dynamical calculations. In contrast to previous reports our calculations predict that the soft mode in SnTe features a strongly asymmetric spectral weight distribution qualitatively similar to that found in PbTe. Experimentally, we find that the overall width in energy of the phonon peaks is comparable in our neutron scattering spectra for SnTe and PbTe. We observe the well-known double-peaklike signature of the TO mode in PbTe even down to T=5K, questioning its proposed origin purely based on phonon-phonon scattering. The proximity to the incipient ferroelectric transition in PbTe likely plays an important role not included in current models.