Searching for a second excitation in the inelastic neutron scattering spectrum of a liquid metal: a Bayesian analysis

When probed at nanometer and picosecond scales, the properties of a liquid present striking analogies with the ones of the corresponding solid, one of the most surprising is the ability of supporting shear wave propagation, as a rigid medium. Although this evidence is being reported by a growing number of terahertz scattering measurements, it remains an open question whether it is universal or rather typical of some liquids only. Furthermore, given its elusive signatures in the scattering signal, the detection of this effect appears as a typical case where an unintentional “bias of confirmation” can mislead experimentalists. We thus decided to use a Bayesian inference approach to achieve a probabilistically grounded and evidence-based lineshape modeling of the inelastic neutron scattering spectra from liquid silver, whose simulated density autocorrelations bear evidence of a shear mode propagation over very short distances. The result of our analysis indicates that the observation of any additional, non-longitudinal, acoustic modes in this simple system goes beyond the accuracy of the used scattering method.