Light‐scattering photography of polymers near the glass transition

Abstract

AbstractLaser light scattered from a block of polystyrene is observed to have a pattern of bright and dark regions called speckle. We observe that the speckle pattern has a lifetime consistent with that of the average relaxation lifetime 〈τ〉 of the intensity fluctuations of the medium as determined by photon correlation spectroscopy. In order to study the pattern of the scattered light, a series of photographs was taken at a variety of exposure times. For each series, the value of the average relaxation lifetime is defined by the temperature and pressure of the polystyrene sample. When the value of 〈τ〉 is short relative to the exposure time, the photograph displays only a random pattern of exposed grains. This is due to the large number of fluctuations that have occurred during the exposure time with random phases relative to one another. As the average relaxation time is increased at a constant exposure time, the speckle pattern appears when the value of 〈τ〉 becomes comparable to the exposure time. The phenomenon of laser speckle allows the time scale of the slowly relaxing fluctuations near the glass transition to be visualized. A digitized series of such pictures could be analyzed to obtain the average relaxation time for the fluctuations, just as in normal photon correlation spectroscopy where the intensity of one coherence area is measured as a function of time.