Vibrational-translational relaxation rate in liquid oxygen

The schlieren technique is used to measure the vibrational-translational relaxation time τ in liquid oxygen. It is shown experimentally that a methane additive is a strong deactivator of the vibrational excitation of O₂. The influence of helium on this process is considerably weaker. The maximum value obtained was τ_ν=1.9 ± 0.2 msec.