Helium relaxation

Lipa J A, Swanson D R, Nissen J A, Chui TCP and Israelsson U E 1996 Heat capacity and thermal relaxation of bulk helium very near the lambda point Phys. Rev. Lett. 76 944-7... 

It would be of great interest to experimentally verify these new results of phonon modes, MSB s and relaxations by suitable methods, such as electron-energy-loss-spectroscopy or thermal helium beam scattering. 

As already observed for some isotropic polynuclear clusters [30 - 32], slow relaxation of the magnetization in an external magnetic field can occur because of the inefficient transfer of energy to the environment, for example, the helium bath, and consequent reabsorption of the emitted phonon by the spin system. The phenomenon, also known as phonon bottleneck (PB), was first introduced by Van Vleck [33]. It is characteristic of low temperatures, where relaxation is dominated by the direct process between closely spaced levels, and results from the low density of phonons with such a long wavelength to match the small energy separation... 

The density of He I at the boiling point at 1 atm is 125 kg m 3 and the viscosity is 3 x 10 6 Pa s. As we would anticipate, cooling increases the viscosity until He II is formed. Cooling this form reduces the viscosity so that close to 0 K a liquid with zero viscosity is produced. The vibrational motion of the helium atoms is about the same or a little larger than the mean interatomic spacing and the flow properties cannot be considered in classical terms. Only a quantum mechanical description is satisfactory. We can consider this condition to give the limit of De-+ 0 because we have difficulty in defining a relaxation when we have the positional uncertainty for the structural components. 

The manufacture of evacuated closed-cell PE foam and potential applications of these foams and of gas-exchanged foams, which were exposed to fluorine in helium after evacuation, are described. The evacuated foams were prepared by rapid evacuation in a chamber to a pressure of 5 to 10mm Hg, during which the foam segments initially expanded and then rapidly relaxed to about their original dimensions as gas diffused out. Thermal insulation is considered to be a potential end-use. 3 refs. 

The original studies (McDonald et cd., 1965) that reported the formation of these species were limited by the available technology to temperatures above 77 K. At those temperatures, the minority S = species are the only ones detectable by EPR, but at temperatures below 25 K, attained by the use of liquid helium as a refrigerant, other species can be observed (Salerno and Siedow, 1979 Rich et al., 1978). These species have much faster relaxation rates because they... 

On adding dioxygen to the fully reduced laccase of the lacquer tree Rhus vemicifera, the type-1 Cu and the type-3 Cu-pair were oxidized in the ms range and an optical intermediate was observed at 360 nm At liquid helium temperatures an EPR signal was observed, which was tentatively interpreted as due to O ", as a result of its very short relaxation time and of the increase of its linewidth when the reduced laccase of the fungus Polyporus versicolor was treated with 0 A similar paramagnetic oxygen intermediate was also observed with the laccase of another lacquer tree Rhus succedanea and with ceruloplasmin. The decay of the intermediate at 25 °C (tj = 1 s at pH 5.5 with R. succedanea laccase) was accompanied by the reoxidation of the type-2 Cu >. One would expect, however, such an intermediate to be extremely reactive (See Sect. 3.3), while it was stable in tree laccase depleted of type-2 Cu(II)... 

The experiments were done at 70, 100, and 130°C and at pressures somewhat lower than atmospheric. Under these conditions reaction (368) is practically irreversible. Activated charcoal of the trademark Bayer AKT-4 ground to grain size 0.25-0.5 mm served as a catalyst. Estimation of the efficiency factor on the basis of the determination of the effective difusion coefficient of hydrogen in nitrogen or helium has shown that for this grain size the results of reaction rate measurements refer to the kinetic region. Estimation of relaxation time of the reaction rate from (67) showed the reaction to be quasi-steady at the condition of our experiments in the closed system. 

If a relaxing gas, A, is mixed with a non-relaxing gas, B, such as helium, there are two collision processes by which vibration-translation energy transfer may occur... 

Spin-orbit relaxation of Rb(52P) appears to be abnormally slow in all the inert gases except helium (cross-section 10 17 cm2). In fact, according to Pitre et a/.123, the relaxation rate in Kr and Xe is slower than for the equivalent transitions of atomic Cs, which correspond to a three-fold larger change in internal energy. Pitre et al. discuss complications in the rubidium experiments, including the formation of van der Waals complexes with the inert gases, in order to account for the apparently abnormal relaxation rates. Efficient removal of Rb(5 2P) by radiationless processes could upset the derived rate coefficients. The results were discussed in relation to Zener s semi-classical equivalent of equation (14). 

The atomic emission detector is a tunable, element-specific detector that uses microwave-induced helium plasma to generate temperatures high enough to break molecular bonds. The generated free atomic species undergo electron excitation to higher energy states, followed by relaxation and photon emission at characteristic frequencies... 

To take one example, let us consider the effects of rotational relaxation in BrF. The excited 53FI(0+) state in BrF is crossed by another 0+ state which leads to predissociation of the B state in vibrational levels 7 and 6. The initial study of the dynamics of the B state was carried out in a discharge flow system where the minimum operating pressure was 50 m Torr. The gas-kinetic collision rate coefficient at 298 K for He + BrF(B) collisions is 4.4 x 10-10 cm3 molecule-1 s-1. Thus, at the minimum pressure of 50 m Torr, the average time between collisions of excited BrF molecules and helium buffer gas is 1.5/us. This time is short compared with the radiative lifetime of BrF (42—56/ns [43]) and therefore significant redistribution in the excited state can occur before it radiates. 

Perkin Elmer MPF-3 spectrofluorometer. X- and Q-band measurements of EPR spectra were carried out at liquid nitrogen and liquid helium temperatures. Microcalorimetric measurements were performed on a LKB 10700 batch microcalorimeter. Temperature-jump relaxation kinetics were measured using a double beam instrument (18) with a cell adapted for anaerobic work. The relaxation signals were fed into an H.P. 2100 computer and analyzed as described in Ref. 7. The pulse radiolysis exepriments were carried out on the 5-MeV linear accelerator at the Hebrew University. Details of the system have been published previously (19). 

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