The temperature jump method is a technique used in chemical kinetics for the measurement of very rapid reaction rates.
It is one of a class of chemical relaxation methods pioneered by the German physical chemist Manfred Eigen in the 1950s.
The heating usually involves discharging of a capacitor (in the kV range) through a small volume (< 1 mL) of a conducting solution containing the molecule/reaction to be studied.
In some versions of the apparatus used, the solution is heated instead by the output of a pulsed laser which emits in the near infra-red.
Due to the small volumes involved the temperature of the solution returns to that of its surroundings in minutes.
equal to a function of the forward (ka) and reverse (kb) rate constants.
The ability to observe intermediate steps in a reaction pathway is one of the attractive features of this technology.