A light scattering study of non equilibrium fluctuations in liquid mixtures to measure the Soret and mass diffusion coefficient.

We use dynamic near field scattering to measure the dynamics of concentration non equilibrium fluctuations at the steady-state of Soret separation. The analysis reveals that above a threshold wave vector qc, the dynamics is governed by diffusion while at smaller wave vectors, gravity dominates. From the measurements, we extract both the mass diffusion and the Soret coefficients. Comparing our results with literature data, we find good agreement confirming that the proposed experimental technique can be considered a sound approach for the study of thermodiffusion processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]