Competition of mesoscales and crossover to tricriticality in polymer solutions.
We show that the approach to asymptotic fluctuation-induced critical behavior in polymer solutions is governed by a competition between a correlation length diverging at the critical point and an additional mesoscopic length-scale, the radius of gyration. Accurate light scattering experiments on polystyrene solutions in cyclohexane with polymer molecular weights ranging from 200 000 up to 11.4x10(6) clearly demonstrate a crossover between two universal regimes: a regime with Ising asymptotic critical behavior, where the correlation length prevails, and a regime with tricritical theta-point behavior determined by a mesoscopic polymer-chain length.
Anisimov
M A
MA
Department of Chemical Engineering and Institute for Physical Science and Technology, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland 20742, USA.
Kostko
A F
AF
Sengers
J V
JV