Neutron Scattering Investigation of the Liquid-Liquid Transition in Confined Water*

We present deep inelastic neutron scattering investigation (DINS) of water confined in the nanopores of hydrophilic silica compounds with two different average pore sizes, respectively 16 Å and 39 Å. The goals of these measurements are (1) to identify potential changes in the proton momentum distribution n(p) as the temperature is reduced through the putative “fragile” liquid to “strong” liquid crossover temperature T_L, and (2) to determine the lineshape of the corresponding n(p) for comparison with results in other confining media and in bulk water.