Non-equilibrium concentration fluctuations in binary liquids with realistic boundary conditions

Abstract

Because of the spatially long-ranged nature of spontaneous fluctuations in thermal non-equilibrium systems, they are affected by boundary conditions for the fluctuating hydrodynamic variables. In this paper we consider a liquid mixture between two rigid and impervious plates with a stationary concentration gradient resulting from a temperature gradient through the Soret effect. For liquid mixtures with a large Lewis number, we are able to obtain explicit analytical expressions for the intensity of the non-equilibrium concentration fluctuations as a function of the frequency $\omega$ and the wave number $q$ of the fluctuations. In addition we elucidate the spatial dependence of the intensity of the non-equilibrium fluctuations responsible for a non-equilibrium Casimir effect.