From equilibrium to steady state: The transient dynamics of colloidal liquids under shear

We investigate stresses and particle motion during the start-up of flow in a colloidal dispersion close to arrest into a glassy state. A combination of molecular dynamics simulation, mode-coupling theory and confocal microscopy experiments is used to investigate the origins of the widely observed stress overshoot and (previously not reported) super-diffusive motion in the transient dynamics. A link between the macro-rheological stress versus strain curves and the microscopic particle motion is established. Negative correlations in the transient auto-correlation function of the potential stresses are found responsible for both phenomena, and arise even for homogeneous flows and almost Gaussian particle displacements.