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 ${\dot{\gamma }}^{\mathrm{ex}}\to 0$.

4 pages, 8 figures

References in corpus (4)

• Accurate sampling using Langevin dynamics
• The equilibrium intrinsic crystal-liquid interface of colloids
• Glassy aspects of melting dynamics (On melting dynamics and the glass transition, Part I)
• The order-disorder transition in colloidal suspensions under shear flow