Solidity of viscous liquids. III. Alpha relaxation

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It is suggested that the ω⁻¹/² high-frequency decay of the alpha loss in highly viscous liquids, which appears to be generic, is a manifestation of a negative long-time tail as typically encountered in stochastic dynamics. The proposed mechanism requires that the coherent diffusion constant is much larger than estimated from the alpha relaxation time. This is justified by reference to the solidity of viscous liquids in an argument which, by utilizing the irrelevance of momentum conservation at high viscosity and introducing a center of mass diffusion constant, implies that at high viscosity the coherent diffusion constant is much larger than the incoherent diffusion constant.