| Issue |
EPL
Volume 77, Number 1, January 2007
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 18007 | |
| Number of page(s) | 5 | |
| Section | Interdisciplinary Physics and Related Areas of Science and Technology | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/77/18007 | |
| Published online | 10 January 2007 | |
Superdiffusion of concentration in wormlike-micelle solutions
Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science - Bangalore, 560012, India
Received:
19
June
2006
Accepted:
9
November
2006
Our dynamic light scattering studies of viscoelastic wormlike-micelle solutions of surfactant cetyltrimethylammonium tosylate (CTAT) show superdiffusive relaxation of concentration fluctuations: relaxation rate 
at wavenumber q, with 
, 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 mM to 100 mM of sodium chloride (NaCl), takes the system from the diffusion-controlled (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.
PACS: 82.70.Uv – Surfactants, micellar solutions, vesicles, lamellae, amphiphillic systems (hydrophilic and hydrophobic interaction) / 05.40.Fb – Random walks and Levy flights / 82.70.Gg – Gels and sols
© Europhysics Letters Association, 2007
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