Liquid-to-glass transition in glycerol: A 1H rotating-frame spin-lattice relaxation study

Rotating-frame ¹H spin-lattice relaxation measurements in glycerol with various isotopic substitutions are presented. The data cover the supercooled liquid-to-glass transformation region and, combined with earlier ²H relaxation measurements, may reveal aspects of the crossover from ergodic-to-nonergodic behavior that appears to take place near the calorimetric anomaly at T_g=185 K. The much faster rate of relaxation in the rotating frame and its dependence on the amplitude of the rotating field increase considerably the time window of available data and may help in the understanding of the glass transition.