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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 February 2011
We use Brillouin scattering to measure the dispersion of the propagating acoustic modes in a suspension of hard sphere colloids. We find two distinct longitudinal modes when the sound wavelength becomes comparable to the sphere diameter. The higher frequency mode has a velocity intermediate between those of the pure solid and the pure liquid phases, and its velocity increases with increasing volume fraction, ø. The lower frequency mode has a velocity less than the velocities in either the pure fluid or pure solid phases, and its velocity decreases with increasing ø. We interpret the higher frequency mode as a compressional wave which propagates through both the solid and the fluid, as expected for a composite medium. The lower frequency mode has not been observed before, and is interpreted as a surface acoustic mode, which propagates between adjacent spheres through a decaying portion of the excitation in the fluid.