Weightless experiments to probe universality of fluid critical behavior

Carole Lecoutre-Chabot (1, 2) , Romain Guillaument (1, 2) , Samuel Marre (1, 2) , Yves Garrabos (1, 2) , Daniel Beysens (3, 4) , Inseob Hahn (5)

1 ICMCB - Institut de Chimie de la Matière Condensée de Bordeaux
2 ESEME : Équipe du Supercritique pour l'Environnement, les Matériaux et l'Espace : Équipe commune CEA-CNRS (2000-2014)
3 PMMH - Physique et mécanique des milieux hétérogenes (UMR 7636)
4 SBT - Service des Basses Températures
5 JPL - Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Near the critical point of fluids, critical opalescence results in light attenuation, or turbidity increase, that can be used to probe the universality of critical behavior. Turbidity measurements in SF6 under weightlessness conditions on board the International Space Station are performed to appraise such behavior in terms of both temperature and density distances from the critical point. Data are obtained in a temperature range, far (1 K) from and extremely close (a few μK) to the phase transition, unattainable from previous experiments on Earth. Data are analyzed with renormalization-group matching classical-to-critical crossover models of the universal equation of state. It results that the data in the unexplored region, which is a minute deviant from the critical density value, still show adverse effects for testing the true asymptotic nature of the critical point phenomena.

Domaines: Matériaux; Matière Molle [cond-mat.soft]

Carole Lecoutre-Chabot, Romain Guillaument, Samuel Marre, Yves Garrabos, Daniel Beysens, et al.. Weightless experiments to probe universality of fluid critical behavior. Physical Review E : Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics, 2015, 91 (6), pp.060101(R). ⟨10.1103/PhysRevE.91.060101⟩. ⟨hal-01164097⟩