On the revealing of nonequilibrium phase transitions in water

It has been found that the jump and stabilization of the temperature observed in [L.N. Baturov et al., JETP Lett. 93, 91 (2011)] upon the heating/cooling of water near 4°C at a rate of ∼10⁻³ K/s are observed in water of any purification degree. However, we have not found the process of the formation/melting of supermolecular structures assumed by Baturov et al., which is sought in the shift of the center of the OH band of Raman scattering, e.g., at ∼150 cm⁻¹, as at the melting of hexagonal 1h ice [S.M. Pershin and A.F. Bunkin, Opt. Spectrosc. 85, 190 (1998); Patent RF No. 98, 103249 (1998)]. It has been shown that the revealed temperature features are absent in the presence of the mixing of water and artificial limitation of convection, as well as in a thin layer; this indicates that the regularity of the phenomenon is doubtful and that convection plays an important role. The visualization of convection flows by potassium permanganate made it possible to detect the reversion of their circulation over the trajectory of surface-wall-bottom-volume symmetry axis at the transition through a point of 4°C. The observed features have been interpreted as a manifestation of Archimedes’ principle.