O. Traetteberg et al., DIELECTRIC-CONSTANT AND DIELECTRIC-RELAXATION OF THE PINNED SPIN-DENSITY-WAVE IN THE ALLOYS (TMTSF)2(ASF6)1-X(SBF6)X, Synthetic metals, 56(2-3), 1993, pp. 2785-2790
We present the first measurements of the low frequency dielectric cons
tant for a spin-density wave (SDW) system for a wide range of pinning
energies. The pinning is created by a controlled introduction of disor
der by alloying in the system (TMTSF)2(AsF6)1-x(SbF6)x, 0 less-than-or
-equal-to x less-than-or-equal-to 1. The static dielectric constant is
shown to be inversely proportional to the depinning threshold field.
At high frequencies the dielectric constant falls off as omega(-alpha)
with alpha = 0.7. This frequency dependence is attributed to a distri
bution of relaxation times of the pinned SDW. We show that for a wide
range of pinning energies and temperatures the distribution of the rel
axation times characterised by a does not change significantly. The me
an dielectric relaxation time is a measure of the damping of the SDW e
xcitations and it can therefore be compared to the dc nonlinear SDW co
nductivity. At temperatures below 2.5 K the SDW conductivity has a str
onger decrease than the increase of damping calculated from the dielec
tric relaxation. We suggest that this is due to a transition to a comm
ensurate phase in a small fraction of the sample volume.