Universality in Fluid Domain Coarsening: The case of vapor-liquid transition

Abstract: Domain growth during the kinetics of phase separation is studied following vapor-liquid transition in a single component Lennard-Jones fluid. Results are analyzed after appropriately mapping the continuum snapshots obtained from extensive molecular dynamics simulations to a simple cubic lattice. For near critical quench interconnected domain morphology is observed. A brief period of slow diffusive growth is followed by a linear viscous hydrodynamic growth that lasts for an extended period of time. This result is in contradiction with earlier inclusive reports of late time growth exponent 1/2 that questions the uniqueness of the non-equilibrium universality for liquid-liquid and vapor-liquid transitions.