Multiple dynamic regimes in a coarsening foam

Abstract

We use differential dynamic microscopy and particle tracking to determine the dynamical characteristics of a coarsening foam in reciprocal and direct space. At all wavevectors $q$ investigated, the intermediate scattering function exhibits a compressed exponential decay. However, the access to unprecedentedly small $q$s highlights the existence of two distinct regimes for the $q$-dependence of the foam relaxation rate $\Gamma (q)$. At any given foam age, $\Gamma (q)\sim q$ at high $q$, consistent with directionally-persistent and intermittent bubble displacements. At low $q$, we find $\Gamma (q) \sim q^{1.6}$. We show that such change in $q$-dependence of $\Gamma (q)$ relates to a bubble displacement distribution exhibiting a cut-off length of the order of the bubble diameter. Investigations of the $q$-dependence of $\Gamma (q)$ at different foam ages reveal that foam dynamics is not only governed by the bubble length scale, but also by the strain rate imposed by the bubble growth; normalizing $\Gamma (q)$ by this strain rate and multiplying $q$ with the age-dependent bubble radius leads to a collapse of all data sets onto a unique master-curve.