An Upper Limit for Birefringence in the Boundary Layer of a Heat Conducting Gas

Abstract

The Waldmann-Vestner theory for boundary layer effects in polyatomic gases in the nearhydrodynamic regime predicts that in a rarefield heat conducting gas the boundary layers will be birefringent due to the presence of second rank angular momentum polarization. An experiment has been set up in order to measure the birefringence as a function of the distance to the boundary. However, no effect could be detected for N2 and C02 within the sensitivity of the experiment. This corresponds to an upper limit for the birefringence, which is a factor 6 smaller than expected. These results are in contrast to the qualitative data reported earlier in the literature; no conclusions can be drawn, however, about the validity of the Waldmann-Vestner theory.