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We report that the lowest energy transverse-optic phonon in metallic SnTesoftens to near zero energy at the structural transition at $T_C=75 \text{~K}$and importantly show that the energy of this mode below $T_C$ increases as thetemperature decreases. Since the mode is a polar displacement this provesunambiguously that SnTe undergoes a ferroelectric displacement below $T_C$.Concentration gradients and imperfect stoichiometry in large crystals mayexplain why this was not seen in previous inelastic neutron scattering studies.Despite SnTe being metallic we find that the ferroelectric transition issimilar to that in ferroelectric insulators, unmodified by the presence ofconduction electrons: we find that (i) the damping of the polar mode isdominated by coupling to acoustic phonons rather than electron-phonon coupling(ii) the transition is almost an ideal continuous transition (iii) comparisonwith density functional calculations identifies the importance ofdipolar-dipolar screening for understanding this behaviour.

An Inelastic X-Ray investigation of the Ferroelectric Transition in SnTe