Calculation of the mobility of electrons injected in liquid methane.

Abstract

We report the calculation of the low-field mobility of electrons injected in liquid methane between the triple point and the critical point. The calculation was carried out as if methane were an atomic liquid resembling a rare gas. A good agreement with the experimental time-of-flight data is obtained by considering only the scattering of electrons by acoustical phonons and by static density fluctuations. The only arbitrary parameter that was used is an effective mass, ${m}^{\mathrm{*}}$=0.8${m}_{0}$. The good agreement between experiment and the model calculation is an indication that the optical modes arising from both the vibrational and rotational modes of the isolated molecules do not affect very much the mobility of thermal electrons.