Low-temperature inelastic collisions between hydrogen molecules and helium atoms

Review of Optical Thermometry Techniques for Flows at the Microscale towards Their Applicability to Gas Microflows

Thermometry techniques have been widely developed during the last decades to analyze thermal properties of various fluid flows. Following the increasing interest for microfluidic applications, most of these techniques have been adapted to the microscale and some new experimental approaches have emerged. In the last years, the need for a detailed experimental analysis of gaseous microflows has drastically grown due to a variety of exciting new applications. Unfortunately, thermometry is not yet well developed for analyzing gas flows at the microscale. Thus, the present review aims at analyzing the main currently available thermometry techniques adapted to microflows. Following a rapid presentation and classification of these techniques, the review is focused on optical techniques, which are the most suited for application at microscale. Their presentation is followed by a discussion about their applicability to gas microflows, especially in confined conditions, and the current challenges to be overcome are presented. A special place is dedicated to Raman and molecular tagging thermometry techniques due to their high potential and low intrusiveness.

Time-resolved study of crystallization in deeply cooled liquid parahydrogen

We present real-time measurements of the crystallization process occurring in liquid para-hydrogen (para-H(2)) quenched to ≈0.65T(m) (T(m)=13.8   K is the melting point of bulk liquid para-H(2)). The combination of high spatial resolution Raman spectroscopy and liquid microjet generation allows, in situ, capturing structural changes with ∼10(-8)  s time resolution. Our results provide a crystal growth rate that rules out a thermally activated freezing process and reveal that the quenched melt freezes into a metastable polymorph, which undergoes a structural transition. The achieved temporal control offers new opportunities for exploring the elementary processes of nonequilibrium phase transformations in supercooled liquids.