Ageing and ultra-slow equilibration in concentrated colloidal hard spheres

We study the dynamic behaviour of concentrated colloidal hard spheres using time resolved correlation, a light scattering technique that can detect the slow evolution of the dynamics in out-of-equilibrium systems. Surprisingly, equilibrium is reached a very long time after sample initialization, the non-stationary regime lasting up to three orders of magnitude more than the relaxation time of the system. Before reaching equilibrium, the system displays unusual ageing behaviour. The intermediate scattering function decays faster than exponentially and its relaxation time evolves non-monotonically with sample age.