Dichroism and birefringence induced by shear in a critical binary fluid

Abstract

A large anisotropy in the absorption of light has been detected in a sheared mixture of nitrobenzene and $n$-hexane at critical concentration. This dichroism is well supported by the Onuki and Kawasaki theory. The corresponding birefringence amplitude exhibits some discrepancy when compared with the above theory, but this vanishes if the same scaling function as for dichroism is used.