Density fluctuations near the liquid-gas critical point of a confined fluid

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2004 May;69(5 Pt 2):057102. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.69.057102. Epub 2004 May 24.

Abstract

We report the results of an experimental study of the effect of a dilute silica network on liquid-gas critical phenomena in carbon dioxide (CO2). Using small-angle neutron scattering, we measured the correlation length of the density fluctuations in bulk (xi(bulk)) and confined CO2 (xi(conf)) as a function of temperature and average fluid density. We find that quenched disorder induced by an aerogel suppresses density fluctuations: xi(conf) loses the Ising model divergence characteristic of xi(bulk) and does not exceed the size of pores in the homogeneous region.