Hydrodynamics and growth laws in lamellar ordering

Ordering of lamellar phases described by a free-energy functional with short-range interactions is numerically investigated in two dimensions by means of a pseudo-spectral method. The ordering process is found to depend on the fluid viscosity: it is arrested for large viscosity values and proceeds as a power law for small ones, with a crossover regime for intermediate values. At varying the free energy parameters, strong evidence has been found that the ordering law, unlike binary mixtures, is not unique. Copyright c (c) EPLA, 2007.