Rayleigh‐Wing Scattering from Liquids of Anisotropic Molecules

Abstract

Measurements are reported of the intensities of the sharp (diffuse) and background components in the depolarized light scattered by several aromatic liquids and their variation with temperature. Also reported are the halfwidths of the sharp components in the same, as well as other organic liquids. Comparison with the calculated contribution of uncorrelated molecules to the intensity as a function of the temperature suggests that the diffuse line originates from orientational relaxation of a rather stable configuration (the “quasimolecule”) in which the molecule is in orientational equilibrium with its neighbors.