Influence of layer defects on the damping in ferroelectric thin films

A Green's function technique for a modified Ising model in a transverse field is applied, which allows to calculate the damping of the elementary excitations and the phase transition temperature of ferroelectric thin films with structural defects. Based on an analytical expression for the damping function, we analyze its dependence on temperature, film thickness and interaction strength numerically. The results demonstrate that defect layers in ferroelectric thin films, layers with impurities or vacancies as well as layers with dislocations are able to induce a strong increase of the damping due to different exchange interactions within the defect layers. The results are in good agreement with experimental data for thin ferroelectric films with different thickness.