Eur. Phys. J. B 28, 187-190 (2002)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2002-00215-9

Reply to the Comment on

Low temperature specific heat of blue bronze K_0.30MoO₃

¹ Centre de Recherches sur les Très Basses Températures (associé à l'Université Joseph Fourier) , CNRS, BP 166, 38042 Grenoble Cedex 9, France
² Institute of Physics, POB 304, 10001 Zagreb, Croatia

Corresponding author: ^a katica@ifs.hr

Received: 17 April 2002
Published online: 19 July 2002

Abstract

In our Reply to the Comment [1] we refute the “straightforward” interpretation of the excess low-temperature specific heat, C_p, contribution we have measured in our study of CDW systems K_0.3MoO₃ and (TaSe₄)₂I [2] as originating solely from normal phonon modes. The specific sensitivity of the bump in at low temperatures to the impurity content is consistent with the increased value of the phason pinning gap while the dispersion of normal phonons remains unaffected. We ascribe at least this part of the anomaly to the phason contribution. As stated in reference [3] that the phonon density of states extracted from neutron scattering measurements is the least reliable in this energy range (<0.5 meV), we conclude that C_p measurements are more accurate for detecting the phason contribution.