Turbulent suppression of spinodal decomposition

Light scattering experiments reveal a strong suppression of phase separation near the critical point of a vigorously stirred binary liquid mixture. For stirring Reynolds numbers R ranging from 6.0 × 103 to 4.5 × 103, the apparent critical temperature is depressed by 1 mK to 50 mK. This temperature depression Tc can be fitted to a power law TR where 2. The magnitude of Tc is consistent with simple models which attribute the effect to the suppression of composition fluctuations by shear; however, these models predict 0.80 in contrast to the observed value of 2. Below the apparent critical temperature the turbidity changes significantly throughout a temperature range of tens of millikelvin following a power law (Tc-T) where increases from 1 to 6 as R is increased.