Comparison of the physical aging behavior of a colloidal glass after shear melting and concentration jumps.

Colloidal systems are considered good models of molecular glasses and we further explore the range of validity of this paradigm using a thermosensitive core-shell particle dispersion to study the aging response of a colloidal glass subsequent to both shear-melting and temperature (concentration)-jump perturbations in the vicinity of the glass transition concentration or temperature. Sequential creep experiments were used to probe the different aging responses of the system. The colloidal glass displays aging behavior after both types of perturbation and our results indicate that this colloidal glass is similar to a molecular glass, in that shift rates are found to be below unity and to decrease towards zero as the glass temperature (or concentration) is approached as temperature increases. However, the kinetics of the aging in the two cases are different indicating that the structural changes induced by the mechanical perturbation are different from those induced by the temperature or concentration jump-similar to findings on mechanical rejuvenation of molecular glasses. We also find differences between the colloidal glass and molecular glasses: In the case of the colloidal glass the structural recovery or equilibration times do not diverge, while the mechanical relaxation times do. On the other hand, for the molecular glass, both times change very rapidly with decreasing temperature, apparently towards a distant point of divergence.