Dynamical perspective of the freezing transition of a suspension of hard spheres from the velocity autocorrelation function.
The velocity autocorrelation function of concentrated colloidal fluids of hard-sphere particles, measured by dynamic light scattering, decays to the experimental noise floor from below. The decay follows a stretched exponential function of delay time for the colloidal fluid in thermodynamic equilibrium, and a power law for the nonequilibrium, undercooled colloidal fluid. Consideration of this difference between the two states points to a possible dynamical mechanism of freezing.
van Megen
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Department of Applied Physics, Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Melbourne, Victoria 3000, Australia.