Knowledge Bank

Operation of a microwave spectrometer under saturated conditions has been demonstrated as a means of separating relaxation time information from molecular concentration information for pure rotational $transitions.1$ This technique has been shown to yield accurate partial pressure determinations for the absorbing $species.2$ At very low pressures , however, the variation of the signal with partial pressure is no longer linear and is dependent upon the mole fraction of the absorber. Experiments determining the precise nature of this nonlinearity will be described and the results of these experiments will be presented along with examples of applications to the problems of chemical analysis of gaseous mixtures.