Critical sound propagation in mixtures

¹ Institute for Theoretical Physics, University of Linz, Austria
² Institute for Physics and Biophysics, University of Salzburg, Austria

Received: 12 September 1997
Accepted: 24 November 1997

Abstract

We calculate critical effects in the sound propagation in mixtures near consolute or plait points within a non-asymptotic renormalization group theory and derive general expressions for the frequency-dependent sound velocity and sound attenuation. The critical non-asymptotic time scale in the sound mode in mixtures is set by an effective order parameter Onsager coefficient containing a dynamical parameter related to the enhancement of the thermal conductivity in the mixture, not considered so far. The differences in the critical behavior near the consolute and plait point are due to the different non-asymptotic behavior of the zero-frequency sound velocity. We compare our predictions for the sound velocity and sound absorption near the plait point in - mixtures.