Multi-speckle autocorrelation spectroscopy — a new strategy to monitor ultraslow dynamics in dense and nonergodic media

We present a modification of the conventional dynamic light scattering set-up which allows to monitor the intensity fluctuations of many independent spatial Fourier components of the density fluctuations, i.e. “speckles”, simultaneously by using a charge-coupled device (CCD) camera as area detector. By averaging over the intensity autocorrelation function the final 10–20% decay of the intermediate scattering function in very dense colloidal dispersions is obtained with much higher accuracy. At the same time this multi-speckle autocorrelation spectroscopy provides an alternative route for constructing ensemble-averaged intermediate scattering functions in nonergodic media by replacing the av…