Extreme breakdown of the Einstein relation in liquid water under centrifugation

Fuente: arXiv
Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Wild, Joseph F., Li, Yihan, Liang, Keyue, Gujarathi, Aishwarya S., Chen, Heng, Halliday, Alex N., Cox, Stephen E., Yang, Yuan
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
Subjects:
Online Access:
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
_version_ 1866914127066169344
author Wild, Joseph F.
Li, Yihan
Liang, Keyue
Gujarathi, Aishwarya S.
Chen, Heng
Halliday, Alex N.
Cox, Stephen E.
Yang, Yuan
author_facet Wild, Joseph F.
Li, Yihan
Liang, Keyue
Gujarathi, Aishwarya S.
Chen, Heng
Halliday, Alex N.
Cox, Stephen E.
Yang, Yuan
contents We present evidence that the Einstein relation (ER) breaks down completely in pure water and dilute aqueous solutions under strong centrifugation fields at 40 oC. Isotopologues (e.g., H2O-18) and solutes migrate at a speed of only 5% of that predicted based on the ER. The ER is restored with the addition of solutes above a transition concentration (ct). We further discovered a new scaling law between the solute's partial molar density, the centrifugal acceleration, and ct, which can be quantitatively described by a two-phase model in analog to the Avrami model for phase transformation. The breakdown may stem from long-range dipole interactions or the hydrogen bond network in water, which are disrupted by the presence of solutes. This report shows that studying transport under centrifugation can be a new strategy to understand fundamental transport properties and complex interactions in liquids.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2510_27561
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Extreme breakdown of the Einstein relation in liquid water under centrifugation
Wild, Joseph F.
Li, Yihan
Liang, Keyue
Gujarathi, Aishwarya S.
Chen, Heng
Halliday, Alex N.
Cox, Stephen E.
Yang, Yuan
Soft Condensed Matter
We present evidence that the Einstein relation (ER) breaks down completely in pure water and dilute aqueous solutions under strong centrifugation fields at 40 oC. Isotopologues (e.g., H2O-18) and solutes migrate at a speed of only 5% of that predicted based on the ER. The ER is restored with the addition of solutes above a transition concentration (ct). We further discovered a new scaling law between the solute's partial molar density, the centrifugal acceleration, and ct, which can be quantitatively described by a two-phase model in analog to the Avrami model for phase transformation. The breakdown may stem from long-range dipole interactions or the hydrogen bond network in water, which are disrupted by the presence of solutes. This report shows that studying transport under centrifugation can be a new strategy to understand fundamental transport properties and complex interactions in liquids.
title Extreme breakdown of the Einstein relation in liquid water under centrifugation
topic Soft Condensed Matter
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.27561