Relaxation Processes and Inertial Effects I: Free Rotation about a Fixed Axis

Abstract

The limitations of the usual concepts of relaxation processes for very short periods are discussed, and it is shown that in the limit of very high frequencies the product of the loss factor and frequency must tend to zero. For a consistent kinetic treatment the probability must be considered in phase space, not merely in configuration space; for Cartesian coordinates the stochastic (generalized Liouville) equations can be simplified by a Fourier transformation with regard to the velocities.