Shear-induced quench of long-range correlations in a liquid mixture

A static correlation function of concentration fluctuations in a (dilute) binary liquid mixture subjected to both a concentration gradient and uniform shear flow is investigated within the framework of fluctuating hydrodynamics. It is shown that a well-known |c|(2)/k(4) long-range correlation at large wave numbers k crosses over to a weaker divergent one at wave numbers satisfying k<(gamma;/D)(1/2), while an asymptotic shear-controlled power-law dependence is found at much smaller wave numbers given by k<<(gamma;/nu)(1/2), where c, gamma;, D, and nu are the mass concentration, the rate of the shear, the mass diffusivity, and the kinematic viscosity of the mixture, respectively. The result will provide the possibility to observe the shear-induced suppression of a long-range correlation experimentally by using, for example, a low-angle light scattering technique.