ANOMALOUS PHASE-SEPARATION DYNAMICS IN THE PRESENCE OF SURFACTANTS

We study the phase separation of water and oil in a water-oil-surfacta nt microemulsion, from a totally disordered phase in both two and thre e dimensions using extensive Monte Carlo simulations of a spin model o f microemulsions. The evolution of the characteristic length scale and the structure factor are measured and compared with recent experiment s and theoretical work. At relatively high surfactant concentrations a nd off-critical quenches, we obtain results in agreement with earlier theoretical approaches. For critical quenches at very low surfactant c oncentrations, we observe the surprising result that it is easier to g et to the scaling regime than in the pure binary case.