Engineering mixing properties of fluids by spatial modulations

TL;DR

This paper introduces a method to control fluid mixing by spatially modulating local densities with external potentials, enabling phase diagram manipulation and new phase separation phenomena in dilute bosonic gases.

Contribution

It presents a novel approach to alter fluid interactions through external periodic potentials, leading to the emergence of binodal and spinodal curves in the phase diagram.

Findings

Emergence of binodal and spinodal curves in the phase diagram.

Observation of spinodal decomposition into a mixed-bubble state.

Realization of metastable mixtures undergoing nucleation-based phase separation.

Abstract

We propose a method to change the effective interaction between two fluids by modulation of their local density distributions with external periodic potentials, whereby the mixing properties can be controlled. This method is applied to a mixture of dilute bosonic gases, and binodal and spinodal curves emerge in the phase diagram. Spinodal decomposition into a mixed-bubble state becomes possible, in which one of the coexisting phases has a finite mixing ratio. A metastable mixture is also realized, which undergoes phase separation via nucleation.