Crossover from Ising to mean-field critical behavior in an aqueous electrolyte solution

Jacob, J and Kumar, Anil and Anisimov, MA and Povodyrev, AA and Sengers, JV (1998) Crossover from Ising to mean-field critical behavior in an aqueous electrolyte solution. In: Physical Reveiw E, 58 (2). pp. 2188-2200.

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Abstract

The near-critical behavior of the susceptibility deduced from light-scattering measurements in a ternary liquid mixture of 3-methylpyridine, water, and sodium bromide has been determined. The measurements have been performed in the one-phase region near the lower consolute points of samples with different concentrations of sodium bromide. A crossover from Ising asymptotic behavior to mean-field behavior has been observed. As the concentration of sodium bromide increases, the crossover becomes more pronounced, and the crossover temperature shifts closer to the critical temperature. The data are well described by a model that contains two independent crossover parameters. The crossover of the susceptibility critical exponent γ from its Ising value γ=1.24 to the mean-field value γ=1 is sharp and nonmonotonic. We conclude that there exists an additional length scale in the system due to the presence of the electrolyte which competes with the correlation length of the concentration fluctuations. An analogy with crossover phenomena in polymer solutions and a possible connection with multicritical phenomena is discussed.

Item Type:	Journal Article
Publication:	Physical Reveiw E
Publisher:	American Physical Society
Additional Information:	Copyright of this article belongs to American Physical Society.
Department/Centre:	Division of Physical & Mathematical Sciences > Physics
Date Deposited:	16 Mar 2009 16:44
Last Modified:	19 Sep 2010 05:28
URI:	http://eprints.iisc.ac.in/id/eprint/19457

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