Velocity Fluctuations in Sedimenting Brownian Particles.

We report a gradual transition of dynamics in sedimenting suspensions of charge stabilized Brownian particles prior to the onset of the macroscopic sedimentation front. Using multispeckle ultrasmall-angle x-ray photon correlation spectroscopy (USA-XPCS), we show that well-defined advective motions dominate the colloid dynamics during the early stages of sedimentation. With elapsing time, these advective currents decay and diffusive motions become the dominating contribution in the dynamics. Probing the temporal development of these fluctuations at smaller Peclet numbers (<1) provides a new perspective for the mechanism determining the transient nature of velocity fluctuations in sedimentation and demonstrates new experimental capabilities enabled by multispeckle USA-XPCS.