Pretransitional behavior of electrooptic Kerr effect in liquid thymol

TL;DR

This paper reports the discovery of long-range, critical-like pretransitional effects in liquid thymol using electrooptic Kerr effect and dielectric constant measurements, indicating complex phase transition behavior near melting.

Contribution

It presents the first evidence of pretransitional effects in the liquid phase of thymol, suggesting a possible liquid-liquid transition phenomenon.

Findings

Detected long-range pretransitional effects in liquid thymol

Observed a crossover change approximately 10K above melting point

Identified negative sign of EKE pretransitional anomaly

Abstract

Melting/freezing are canonical examples of discontinuous phase transitions, for which no pretransitional effects in the liquid phase are expected.For the solid phase, weak premelting effects are evidenced. This report shows long-range, critical-like, pretransitional effect in liquid thymol detected in Electrooptic Kerr effect (EKE) studies. Notable is the negative sign of EKE pretransitional anomaly. Studies are supplemented by high-resolution by dielectric constant temperature-related scan, which revealed a weak premelting effect in the solid phase. Both EKE and dielectric constant show a 'crossover' change ca. 10K above the melting temperature. It can be recognized as the hallmark of the challenging Liquid-Liquid transition phenomenon .