Hydrodynamic coarsening of binary fluids

By suitable interpretation of results from the linear analysis of interface dynamics, it is found that the hydrodynamic growth of the size L of domains that follow spinodal decomposition in fluid mixtures scales with time as L ∼ tαwith α = 4/7 in the inertial regime. The previously proposed exponent α = 2/3 is shown to indicate only the scaling of the oscillatory frequency ω^-2/3∼ L of the largest structures of the system. The viscous dissipation in the system occurs within a layer of thickness Ld that also follows a power law of the form L_d∼ L^3/4in the inertial regime. In the viscous regime the growth is linear in time L ∼ t and the dissipative region remains constant L_d∼ L⁰.