Engineering mixing properties of fluids by spatial modulations

Abstract

We propose a method to change the effective interaction between two fluids by modulation of their local density distributions with external periodic potentials, whereby the mixing properties can be controlled. This method is applied to a mixture of dilute bosonic gases, and binodal and spinodal curves emerge in the phase diagram. Spinodal decomposition into a mixed-bubble state becomes possible, in which one of the coexisting phases has a finite mixing ratio. A metastable mixture is also realized, which undergoes phase separation via nucleation.