Critical Dynamics of the Sol-Gel Transition

Abstract

The dynamics of the sol-gel transition is probed by use of quasielastic light scattering. A type of critical dynamics is observed that is associated with a divergent friction, rather than a singularity in a thermodynamic quantity. Several novel effects are reported, including power-law time decay of the intensity autocorrelation function, critical slowing down of the average relaxation time, and observation of a fractal time set in the scattered field.