Influence of hydrodynamics on many-particle diffusion in 2D colloidal suspensions

We study many-particle diffusion in 2D colloidal suspensions with full hydrodynamic interactions through a novel mesoscopic simulation technique. We focus on the behaviour of the effective scaled tracer and collective-diffusion coefficients DT(rho)/D0 and DC(rho)/D0 respectively, where D0 is the single-particle diffusion coefficient, as a function of the density of the colloids rho. At low Schmidt numbers Sc - 1, we find that hydrodynamics has essentially no effect on the behaviour of DT (rho)/D0. At larger Sc, DT (rho)/D0 seems to be enhanced at all densities, although the differences compared to the case without hydrodynamics are rather minor. The collective-diffusion coefficient, on the other hand, is much more strongly coupled to hydrodynamical conservation laws and is distinctly different from the purely dissipative case without hydrodynamic interactions.