Ellipsometric measurement of a surface amplitude ratio near a critical end point

Abstract

We present the experimental determination of a universal surface amplitude ratio near a critical end point. From ellipsometric measurements on five critical binary liquid mixtures, three with an upper critical point and two with a lower critical point, we obtain a value for the modified critical adsorption amplitude ratio of Rma=1.18±0.13, where the error represents three standard deviations. Reasonable agreement is obtained with the theoretical results of H. W. Diehl and M. Smock [Phys. Rev. B 47, 5841 (1993)], from which we obtain Rma=1.33.