A. Arbe et al., Reply to "Comment on 'Merging of the alpha and beta relaxations in polybutadiene: A neutron spin echo and dielectric study' ", PHYS REV E, 60(1), 1999, pp. 1103-1105
In their Comment [E. Donth, K. Schroter, and S. Kahle, preceding Comment, P
hys. Rev. E 69, 1099 (1999)] on our paper [A. Arbe, D. Richter, J. Colmener
o, and B. Farago, Phys. Rev. E 54, 3853 (1996)], Donth et al. conclude that
the procedure followed by us for analyzing data of glass-forming polymers,
which is based on a Williams-like ansatz, is not suited for the merging re
gion of the alpha and beta dielectric processes. They claim that a simple a
ddition ansatz is the correct procedure. In this Reply, by considering new
dielectric data of six different polymers, we show that our procedure seems
to be certainly suitable for describing the merging region without any ad
hoc assumption. Moreover, we also show that an unbiased application of the
addition ansatz in fact gives support to the procedure followed by us. [S10
63-651X(99)03007-X].