Dynamics of gelling liquids: algebraic relaxation

The sol-gel system which is known, experimentally, to exhibit a power law decay of stress autocorrelation function has been studied theoretically. A second-order nonlinear differential equation obtained from Mori's integro-differential equation is derived which provides the algebraic decay of a time correlation function. Involved parameters in the expression obtained are related to exact properties of the corresponding correlation function. The algebraic model has been applied to Lennard-Jones and sol-gel systems. The model shows the behaviour of viscosity as has been observed in computer simulation and theoretical studies. The expression obtained for the viscosity predicts a logarithmic divergence at a critical value of the parameter in agreement with the prediction of other theories.