Fast Dynamics of Glassforming Liquids investigated by Dielectric Spectroscopy a Comparison.pdf

9 Fast Dynamics of Glass-forming Liquids investigated by 9 9 1 Dielectric Spectroscopy: a Comparison r p A U. Schneider, P. Lunkenheimer, R. Brand, and A. Loidl 3 2 Experimentalphysik V, Institut f¨ur Physik, Universit¨at Augsburg, ] D-86135 Augsburg, Germany n n - s i d . t a Motivation m - d n Understanding the mechanism of the glass transition is one of the most challenging tasks of mod- o c ern condensed matter physics. Despite the ample experimental and theoretical work on this subject [ there is still no universally accepted view thoroughly describing all physical aspects. Among the 1 v 7 experimental approaches used to investigate this phenomenon, dielectric spectroscopy is a well estab- 3 3 lished method probing the rotational dynamics of dipolar molecules and the translational dynamics 4 0 of charged particles. 9 9 Our group has access to an extraordinary wide range of frequencies from 10−6 to 1014 Hz almost / t a covering 20 decades continuously. The various experimental setups include a home-made time-domain m - spectrometer (10 µHz ≤ ν ≤ 1 kHz), commercially available autobalance bridges (20 Hz ≤ ν ≤ 20 d n MHz), and radio-frequency and microwave setups using coaxial reflection and transmission techniques o c : (1 MHz ≤ ν ≤ 30 GHz). At 40 GHz ≤ ν ≤ 1.2 THz a quasi-optical submillimeter-wave spectrometer is v i X employed measuring the complex transmission coefficient. Higher frequencies (450 GHz ≤ ν ≤ 10 THz) r a are investigated with a commercially available Fourier-transform infrared spectrometer. We applied these techniques to investigate the glass transition in the molec