Comment on "a 250 GHz ESR study of o-terphenyl: Dynamic cage effects above Tc" [J. Chem. Phys 106, 9996 (1997)]

Abstract

In a recent ESR study Earle, Moscicki, Polimeno and Freed investigated the rotational dynamics of tracers in supercooled o-terphenyl (OTP). Their claims were (1) the correct analysis of the ESR data must account for the possible nonexponential decay of the the rotational correlation function; (2) the average rotational correlation time, 〈τ〉 follows the Stokes-Einstein-Debye law (SED); (3) there are substantial voids in OTP. We show that (i) claims #1 and #2 become very questionable after having corrected inconsistencies between the data and the related plot; (ii) the claim #3 is not supported by additional experimental data. © 1998 American Institute of Physics.