Departures from the soft collision model for Dicke narrowing: Raman measurements in the Q branch of D2

With high quality spectral data, we have observed departures from the soft collision model for translational motion, in the transition region from Doppler broadening to Dicke narrowing. The departures are in agreement with theoretical calculations based on the Boltzmann equation. The implications of the results concerning the dynamics of fluids are discussed. In addition we show that the mass diffusion constant describes the translational diffusion of the optical coherence and we give precise measurements of the broadening coefficients of the Q(0) to Q(6) lines