Collision relaxation time

When relaxation of the internal motion during the collision is fast compared with the slow collision speed v, or when the relaxation time is short compared with the collision time, the kinetic energy operator... 

If die average time between collisions is 2t dieii die relaxation time is dehned by... 

Fig. 6.3. Quasi-static behaviour of relaxation times tgj (upper curves) and r ,i in the case of strong (1,2) and weak (3,4) collisions. The straight lines are the asymptotics of the curves after Q-branch collapse.

As can be seen, the difference in behaviour of orientational relaxation times Te,2 in models of weak and strong collisions is manifested more strongly than in the case of isotropic scattering. Relation (6.26) is... 

Petrunina E. B., Romanov V. P., Soloviov V. A. The computation of the relaxation times in liquid in bimolecular collisions model, Acoustic Journal, 21, 782-8 (1975) [in Russian]. 

The vibrational relaxation of simple molecular ions M+ in the M+-M collision (where M = 02, N2, and CO) is studied using the method of distorted waves with the interaction potential constructed from the inverse power and the polarization energy. For M-M collisions the calculated values of the collision number required to de-excite a quantum of vibrational energy are consistently smaller than the observed data by a factor of 5 over a wide temperature range. For M+-M collisions, the vibrational relaxation times of M+ (r+) are estimated from 300° to 3000°K. In both N2 and CO, t + s are smaller than ts by 1-2 orders of magnitude whereas in O r + is smaller than t less than 1 order of magnitude except at low temperatures. 

The time constant r, appearing in the simplest frequency equation for the velocity and absorption of sound, is related to the transition probabilities for vibrational exchanges by 1/r = Pe — Pd, where Pe is the probability of collisional excitation, and Pd is the probability of collisional de-excitation per molecule per second. Dividing Pd by the number of collisions which one molecule undergoes per second gives the transition probability per collision P, given by Equation 4 or 5. The reciprocal of this quantity is the number of collisions Z required to de-excite a quantum of vibrational energy e = hv. This number can be explicitly calculated from Equation 4 since Z = 1/P, and it can be experimentally derived from the measured relaxation times. 

NMR signals are highly sensitive to the unusual behavior of pore fluids because of the characteristic effect of pore confinement on surface adsorption and molecular motion. Increased surface adsorption leads to modifications of the spin-lattice (T,) and spin-spin (T2) relaxation times, enhances NMR signal intensities and produces distinct chemical shifts for gaseous versus adsorbed phases [17-22]. Changes in molecular motions due to molecular collision frequencies and altered adsorbate residence times again modify the relaxation times [26], and also result in a time-dependence of the NMR measured molecular diffusion coefficient [26-27]. 

The first possibility is that the attractive potential associated with the solid surface leads to an increased gaseous molecular number density and molecular velocity. The resulting increase in both gas-gas and gas-wall collision frequencies increases the T1. The second possibility is that although the measurements were obtained at a temperature significantly above the critical temperature of the bulk CF4 gas, it is possible that gas molecules are adsorbed onto the surface of the silica. The surface relaxation is expected to be very slow compared with spin-rotation interactions in the gas phase. We can therefore account for the effect of adsorption by assuming that relaxation effectively stops while the gas molecules adhere to the wall, which will then act to increase the relaxation time by the fraction of molecules on the surface. Both models are in accord with a measurable increase in density above that of the bulk gas. 

As shown in Figure 3.5.3, the relaxation time versus pressure curves are dramatically different from those obtained using CF4 at a temperature well above its critical point. Indeed, while the overall form of the Tx curves for CF4 in fumed silica was similar to that of the bulk gas, the shape of the Ti plots for c-C4F8 in Vycor more closely resembles that of an adsorption isotherm (Ta of CF4 in Vycor is largely invariant with pressure, as gas-wall collisions in this material are more frequent than gas-gas collisions). This is not surprising given that we expect the behavior of this gas at 291 K to be shifted towards the adsorbed phase. The highest pressure... 

Finally, we would like to point out that in the off-resonance region, the response time of the nonlinearity is limited only by the optical pulse width r, as long as (Ea -Tiaj)/h >>2ir(x ). (8) This is no longer true when collisions (or phonons in solids) are present. For optical frequencies close enough to the absorption edge, the collision induced transitions to the excited state will cause the x s response time to be limited by the relaxation time of the excited states. (8)... 

If the average time between collisions is 2r then the relaxation time is defined by... 

The symbol xso denotes the electron spin relaxation time at zero magnetic field, where Ti = and is another correlation time, associated with distortions of the paramagnetic complex caused by molecular collisions. 

In general, fluctuations in any electron Hamiltonian terms, due to Brownian motions, can induce relaxation. Fluctuations of anisotropic g, ZFS, or anisotropic A tensors may provide relaxation mechanisms. The g tensor is in fact introduced to describe the interaction energy between the magnetic field and the electron spin, in the presence of spin orbit coupling, which also causes static ZFS in S > 1/2 systems. The A tensor describes the hyperfine coupling of the unpaired electron(s) with the metal nuclear-spin. Stochastic fluctuations can arise from molecular reorientation (with correlation time Tji) and/or from molecular distortions, e.g., due to collisions (with correlation time t ) (18), the latter mechanism being usually dominant. The electron relaxation time is obtained (15) as a function of the squared anisotropies of the tensors and of the correlation time, with a field dependence due to the term x /(l + x ). 

A further development is possible by noting that the high frequency shear modulus Goo is related to the mean square particle displacement (m ) of caged fluid particles (monomers) that are transiently localized on time scales ranging between an average molecular collision time and the structural relaxation time r. Specifically, if the viscoelasticity of a supercooled liquid is approximated below Ti by a simple Maxwell model in conjunction with a Langevin model for Brownian motion, then (m ) is given by [188]... 

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