Velocity of an interface driven by an entropic force under shear flow

Abstract

Thermal fluctuations can drive an interface when bulk fluctuation amplitudes differ between two phases. We study how shear flow modifies this mechanism using a stochastic non-conserved order- parameter model. For a planar interface parallel to the imposed shear, we derive its propagation velocity in the weak-noise and small-bias regime. The driving force comprises a shear-modified entropic contribution determined by bulk fluctuation spectra and a non-equilibrium contribution arising from the breaking of time-reversal symmetry. At low shear rates, the entropic term provides the dominant contribution to the velocity of an interface near the zero-velocity plane of the shear flow, and the shear-induced change in the velocity scales as the 4/3 power of the shear rate. At high shear rates, two-dimensional simulations show that the measured velocity is largely accounted for by the modified bulk entropic contribution.

13 pages, 6 figures,