Superdiffusion of concentration in wormlike-micelle solutions

Ganapathy, R and Sood, AK and Ramaswamy, S (2007) Superdiffusion of concentration in wormlike-micelle solutions. In: Europhysics Letters(EPL), 77 (1). 18007-p1-18007-p5.

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Abstract

Our dynamic light scattering studies of viscoelastic wormlike-micelle solutions of surfactant cetyltrimethyl ammonium tosylate (CTAT) show superdiffusive relaxation of concentration fluctuations: relaxation rate $\sim q^z$ at wavenumber q, with z < 2, at concentrations just past overlap. Linear rheology experiments show that the micellar recombination kinetics in this system is diffusion-controlled (micelles break and recombine with their original partners). Addition of 10 m M to 100 m M of sodium chloride (NaCl), takes the system from the diffusion- ontrolled (DC) regime to mean-field recombination kinetics regime where micellar ends combine with ends belonging to other micelles. In the mean-field regime, the concentration fluctuations decay in a purely diffusive manner. We suggest a qualitative explanation for the observed superdiffusive behaviour in the DC regime.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Europhysics Letters(EPL)
Publisher:	Institute of Physics
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to Institute of Physics.
Department/Centre:	Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics
Date Deposited:	30 Nov 2007
Last Modified:	25 Jan 2012 04:54
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/11457

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