β relaxation at the glass transition of hard-spherical colloids

Abstract

The glass transition studied for suspensions of colloidal particles through dynamical light-scattering experiments is analyzed within the mode-coupling theory for the supercooled liquid dynamics. These suspensions are treated as simple atomic systems with a hard-sphere interaction. The scaling properties predicted by the theory are verified. The shape of the master function for the \ensuremath{\beta}-relaxation region agrees well with the experimental data.