Spinodal decomposition in a 3D Lennard-Jones system

Spinodal decomposition in a three-dimensional Lennard-Iones system with one million particles is studied via molecular dynamics simulations. The interfacial width in the system is about 40 times smaller than the linear system dimension, i.e., the system size therefore is comparable to recent simplified model studies. A master form factor is obtained in reasonable accord with theory. The apparent late time domain growth exponent is found to be 1/2. This is in disagreement with other studies on systems in the same dynamic universality class as binary fluids. We account the strongly different domain densities characterizing the phase separation for the deviations from the symmetric binary fluid case. (c) 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.