1. Phase-transition oscillations induced by a strongly focused laser beam.
- Author
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Devailly, Clémence, Crauste-Thibierge, Caroline, Petrosyan, Artyom, and Ciliberto, Sergio
- Subjects
- *
PHASE transitions , *LASER beams , *PHOTON beams , *BINARY mixtures , *COMPLEX fluids - Abstract
We report the observation of a surprising phenomenon consisting in a oscillating phase transition which appears in a binary mixture when this is enlightened by a strongly focused infrared laser beam. The mixture is polymethyl- meth-acrylate (PMMA)-3-octanone, which has an upper critical solution temperature at Tc = 306.6 K and volume fraction (ɸc = 12.8% [Crauste et al., arXiv:1310.6720, 2013]. We describe the dynamical properties of the oscillations, which are produced by a competition between various effects: the local accumulation of PMMA produced by the laser beam, thermophoresis, and nonlinear diffusion. We show that the main properties of this kind of oscillations can be reproduced in the Landau theory for a binary mixture in which a local driving mechanism, simulating the laser beam, is introduced. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2015
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