Nuclear magnetic relaxation in liquid ammonia and conditional inertial rotation in liquids

Abstract

A theory of nuclear magnetic relaxation induced by inertial rotation in polar liquids is described. It is proposed that such rotation occurs only when the neighbourhood of a molecule attains an expanded lattice configuration. The non-markovian processes involved in the relaxation are expressed in terms of rate constants that occur in a formulation due to Anderson, and these are interpreted in terms of the unconditioned inertial rotation theory described in the preceding paper. The theory is used to interpret the values of T ₁ obtained for ¹⁴N and D in liquid ammonia. The paper concludes with an outline of a general theory of anisotropic diffusion in liquids.