Successive exponential and full aging regimes evidenced by tracer diffusion in a colloidal glass

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2005 Jul;72(1 Pt 1):011403. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.72.011403. Epub 2005 Jul 8.

Abstract

We study the aging of a colloidal laponite glass by measuring the dynamic structure factor of dilute embedded tracer particles on micrometric length scales. We show that an initial aging regime, where the decay time grows exponentially with aging time t(w), tau approximately exp (gamma t(w)), is followed by a full aging regime, tau approximately t(v)(w) with v approximately 1. The dynamics of the tracers is diffusive in the exponential regime and hyperdiffusive in the full aging regime, up to micrometric length scales.