Low-temperature specific heat and thermal conductivity of silica aerogels

Abstract
Specific-heat and thermal-conductivity measurements were made on a series of base-catalyzed silica aerogels at temperatures between 0.05 and 20 K. Evidence for a crossover between regimes of characteristically different excitations was observed. The data analysis indicates a ‘‘bump’’ in the density of vibrational states g(ω) at the crossover frequency from phonon to fracton behavior.