Eur. Phys. J. E 38, 31 (2015)

http://link.springer.com/article/10.1140/epje/i2014-14107-1

Editorial: Thermal non-equilibrium phenomena in multi-component fluids

Fabrizio Croccolo and Henri Bataller

In this Topical Issue we deal with thermodiffusion; a phenomenon, also known as the Ludwig–Soret effect, that describes the coupling between a temperature gradient and the resulting mass fluxes. Discovered more than 150 years ago, no unique theoretical explanation is yet available, and experimental data is not exhaustive. Given the recent trend to investigate thermodiffusion in ternary systems, a benchmark measurement is provided in this Topical Issue by six different teams measuring mass transport properties of the same ternary mixture both in microgravity and on ground to provide reference averaged values for the quantities of interest.