Journal of Chemical Physics, Vol.117, No.7, 3289-3295, 2002
Orientational and induced contributions to the depolarized Rayleigh spectra of liquid and supercooled ortho-terphenyl
The depolarized light scattering spectra of the glassforming liquid ortho-terphenyl have been calculated in the low frequency region using molecular dynamics simulation. Realistic system configurations are produced by using a recent flexible molecular model and combined with two limiting polarizability schemes, both of them using the dipole-induced-dipole contributions at first and second order. The calculated Rayleigh spectral shape are in good agreement with the experimental results in a large temperature range. The analysis of the different contributions to the Rayleigh spectra emphasizes that the orientational and the collision-induced (translational) terms lie on the same time scale and are of comparable intensity. Moreover, the cross correlation terms are always found to be an important contribution to the scattering intensity.