Shear-induced criticality near a liquid-solid transition of colloidal suspensions

Abstract

We investigate colloidal suspensions under shear flow through numerical experiments. By measuring the time-correlation function of a bond-orientational order parameter, we find a divergent time scale near a transition point from a disordered fluid phase to an ordered fluid phase, where the order is characterized by a nonzero value of the bond-orientational order parameter. We also present a phase diagram in the $(\rho ,{\dot{\gamma }}^{\mathrm{ex}})$ plane, where $\rho$ is the density of the colloidal particles and ${\dot{\gamma }}^{\mathrm{ex}}$ is the shear rate of the solvent. The transition line in the phase diagram terminates at the equilibrium transition point, while a critical region near the transition line vanishes continuously as ${\dot{\gamma }}^{\mathrm{ex}}\to 0$.

arXiv comment4 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (6)

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• Do solids flow?
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Cited by in corpus (4)

• Long-range phase order in two dimensions under shear flow
• Non-equilibrium quasi-long-range order of driven random field O(N) model
• Phase transition in peristaltic transport of frictionless granular particles
• Dynamical solid-liquid transition through oscillatory shear