Reply to “Comment on ‘Merging of the α and β relaxations in polybutadiene: A neutron spin echo and dielectric study’ ”

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Abstract
In their Comment [E. Donth, K. Schroter, and S. Kahle, preceding Comment, Phys. Rev. E 69, 1099 (1999)] on our paper [A. Arbe, D. Richter, J. Colmenero, 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 region of the α and β dielectric processes. They claim that a simple addition 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.