Abstract:
Results are described from dynamic light scattering studies on concentrated suspensions of 'hard-sphere' colloidal
particles in their equilibrium and metastable fluid states. We have found that the time and wave vector
dependencies of the diffusion coefficients and (consequently) the logarithms of the intermediate scattering
functions can be factorized. This is demonstrated by a simple scaling procedure which collapses the diffusion
coefficients and the measured intermediate scattering functions over a wide (but not complete) range of wave
vectors onto single time-dependent master curves. An interpretation suggests that the relaxation of interparticle
structure is related to self-diffusion.