Spinodal Decomposition and Tricritical Phenomena

激光光散射将被用来研究凝聚态物理中的几种基本现象和过程。这些是：水/醇/油混合物中非对称三临界点附近的临界行为;液体混合物的相分离突然变得不稳定;在溶液中生长的二氧化硅的分形网络的性质，其是某些玻璃的前体，以及这种网络对液体混合物中的相分离和临界现象的影响。测量将使用在NSF支持下开发的独特且非常精确的激光散射仪器进行，该仪器测量绝对散射截面及其波矢量依赖性，直至非常小的散射角。它也被用来测量负责光散射的自发波动的衰减率。这种连接能力是非常有用的，因为它提供了准确的结果，热力学可膨胀性，静态长度尺度和动态行为。这为将动态特性与静态特性联系起来的理论提供了严格的检验。

Laser light scattering will be used to study several phenomena and processes that are of basic interest in condensed matter physics. These are: critical behavior near a non-symmetric tricritical point in water/alcohol/oil mixtures; phase separation of liquid mixtures suddenly rendered thermodynamically unstable; the properties of fractal networks of silica grown in solution, which are the precursors of certain glasses, and the effect such networks have on phase separation and critical phenomena in liquid mixtures. The measurements will be carried out using a unique and very accurate laser light-scattering instrument developed with prior NSF support, which measures the absolute scattering cross-section and its wave-vector dependence down to very small scattering angles. It is also used to measure the decay-rate of the spontaneous fluctuations responsible for the scattering of light. This joint capability is very useful since it provides accurate results for thermodynamic susceptibilities, static length scales and dynamic behavior. This provides stringent tests of theories relating dynamic properties to static ones.