Relaxation may occur between any two allowed energy states of nuclei, atoms, or molecules in the solid, liquid, or gas phase. A distinction has already been made between chemical relaxation, which involves a transformation between two chemically distinguishable molecules such as the dissociation of nitrogen tetroxide, and physical processes such as the transfer of energy between translational and vibrational states of a molecule displayed by sound absorption in a homogeneous gas. Although it is useful to classify relaxation processes as chemical or molecular, the distinction between them depends on the height of the energy barrier separating the chemical species, and it becomes blurred when structural isomerizations are considered. Liquid methylcyclohexane, for example, absorbs sound of ultrahigh frequency. The relaxation effect is attributed to an isomerization (change in structure) between two forms of the molecule called the axial and equatorial chair forms, as shown below:

In the axial form the methyl group (―CH₃) lies perpendicular to the principal axis of the carbon ring, whereas in the equatorial form the methyl group lies in the plane of the ring. Whether the interconversion is considered a chemical or a molecular relaxation process is largely a matter of definition.

Atomic nuclei may exhibit relaxation effects. Some nuclei spin mechanically. Because nuclei are charged, there is a magnetic field associated with a spinning nucleus: it behaves like a simple bar magnet with a north and a south pole. The nucleus is said to have a magnetic moment that will experience a force when placed in an external magnetic field. A hydrogen nucleus in an external magnetic field, for example, may orient its nuclear magnetic moment either parallel or antiparallel to the external field. The latter is a higher-energy orientation, called the upper spin state. The equilibrium distribution of many hydrogen nuclei between the two spin states (parallel and antiparallel) can be perturbed (i.e., changed) by the absorption of electromagnetic radiation of appropriate frequency. The system will then relax to the equilibrium distribution by time-dependent radiationless transitions of the hydrogen nuclei from the upper to the lower spin state. This process of returning to the equilibrium distribution is called spin-lattice relaxation, because the excess energy of the upper spin state is transferred to molecules surrounding the relaxing hydrogen nuclei as increased translational, rotational, or vibrational energy.

As with nuclei, atoms and molecules can be excited to higher energy states by the absorption of electromagnetic radiation. A nonequilibrium distribution of atoms or molecules in excited states is frequently accomplished by a technique called flash photolysis, in which the system of atoms or molecules is subjected to an intense flash of visible or ultraviolet light. The excited species may undergo many fates, but if they decay to the equilibrium distribution between the ground, or lowest, states and the excited states of the original atoms or molecules, the system is said to have relaxed.

The word relaxation is sometimes used to describe the radiation of energy by individual molecules, atoms, or nuclei rather than by a large number of them. A hydrogen nucleus, for example, may decay from the upper to the lower spin state by transferring radiant energy to a nearby hydrogen nucleus in the lower spin state. This exchange of spins is called spin-spin relaxation. It shortens the lifetime of an individual excited nucleus, but it does not restore the equilibrium distribution of parallel and antiparallel spins. Although it is convenient to think of an individual excited nucleus as relaxing, only the response of an excited population of many nuclei can be measured. This usage of the term relaxation obscures the most useful experimental feature of relaxation processes.

Initial and final states

In virtually all relaxation experiments, a thermodynamic equilibrium state is disturbed, and the time required for re-equilibration is measured. The practical advantage of starting with a system at equilibrium is most apparent in the study of chemical reactions in solution. Nearly all the elementary steps in chemical reactions, such as transfers of protons and electrons from one molecule to another, occur in less than a millisecond, and yet, as late as the 1960s, solution reactions with half-times (time in which the reaction is half completed) shorter than a millisecond could not be studied. This limit was imposed by the hydrodynamic problem of mixing two solutions. Reaction rates had been studied by mixing the reactants and monitoring the rate at which products appeared. The most elaborate mechanical mixing devices that have been built so far require a millisecond to initiate a solution reaction. Manfred Eigen was the first person to clearly perceive that mixing could be avoided by perturbing an equilibrium and watching it relax. His enormous contribution to the study of fast chemical reactions was recognized by the award of a Nobel Prize in 1967.

Instead of an equilibrium system being disturbed, a stationary state may be perturbed. Many enzyme-catalyzed reactions, for example, are experimentally irreversible. Nevertheless, for much of the time course of the reaction, the chemical intermediates are present in a stationary state; that is, their concentrations do not change. The stationary state can be disturbed, and the rate of its reestablishment may be used to deduce the lifetimes of the chemical intermediates. Combined rapid mixing and relaxation techniques have been used successfully in a study of catalysis by the enzyme ribonuclease.

Creation of the disturbance

Eigen divided the methods used to disturb systems into indirect, or competition, methods and direct, or perturbation, methods. In the indirect approach, the relaxing system is continuously disturbed. The competition between the disturbance and the relaxation process results in the establishment of a stationary state, from which information about the relaxation process must be inferred. Ultrasonic absorption is an example of a competition method. The competition between the temperature and pressure variations in the sound wave and the dissociation of nitrogen tetroxide sets up a stationary state in which re-equilibration of the chemical reaction lags behind the pressure fluctuations in the sound wave. The reactivities of the monomer and dimer are derived indirectly from measurements of sound absorption. Flash photolysis is an example of a direct method, in which the system is momentarily perturbed. The molecules are electronically excited from the ground, or lowest and normal, energy state to higher energy states by the flash. Their return, or decay, to the ground state can be followed directly by monitoring the reemission of the absorbed light.

A chemical equilibrium can be disturbed by changing the pressure or temperature or by applying an electric field. If a volume change accompanies a chemical reaction, the ratio of products to reactants at equilibrium will depend on the pressure. The point at which equilibrium sets in will depend on temperature, if heat is absorbed or released in the reaction. The ratio will also depend on electric field strength, if the polarizabilities (change in orientation or position of electric charges) of the reactants and products are different. Nuclear and electronic states can be excited by the absorption of electromagnetic radiation, and the latter can also be excited thermally.

Perturbation forces, when expressed mathematically in terms of strength and time, are called forcing functions. In principle, a forcing function may assume any form, but in practice it must be easy to generate experimentally and to analyze mathematically. Examples of forcing functions are the sinusoidal temperature and pressure variations in a sound wave (charting the variations produces a curve called a sine curve, which varies from positive to negative values) and sinusoidally alternating electric fields, which are used in dielectric relaxation measurements. Other convenient forcing functions are step, or incremental, perturbations and rectangular pulses (pulses of which the strength rises nearly instantaneously, remains at the higher value for a period of time, and then rapidly returns to its initial value).

Step perturbations of the temperature and pressure can be produced in shock tubes. A gas at high pressure is separated by a membrane from the gas being studied at low pressure. When the membrane is burst, a plane pressure wave caused by the high-pressure driving gas moves through the low-pressure gas under study. Temperature increases of several thousand degrees may accompany moderate pressure shocks. The shock front travels through the gas with a velocity comparable to the mean molecular velocity, so that the width of the shock front is only a few mean free paths (average distances traveled by the molecules between collisions). As the shock passes, the translational energy of the molecules in the shock front is increased. The system relaxes as the excess energy is distributed by collisions to rotational and vibrational degrees of freedom.

Rectangular temperature perturbations (plotted on a graph, these show up as a curve that periodically rises suddenly, stays constant for an interval, and then drops suddenly to the original value) can be produced in aqueous solutions of reacting systems by using microwaves to heat the solution. Water molecules can absorb energy of rotation at 10¹⁰ hertz (cycles per second). By concentrating the microwave energy in a small volume, an increase of several degrees in temperature can be obtained in one microsecond using pulses of radar. Since the radar generator can be repeatedly pulsed, coupling it with a continuous flow system improves the experimental accuracy by averaging over the period of the experiment.