Time evolution of size distribution for smoke aerosols using photon correlation spectroscopy

Generally most of the samples for particle sizing measurements are polydisperse except especially prepared monodisperse samples like polystyrene latex beads. In such cases knowledge of size distribution instead of mean size becomes desirable for a better and complete understanding of the sample. Using constrained regularization method photon correlation spectroscopy data for smoke aerosols have been analyzed to find out changes in size distribution with passage of time. We observed that the initial monomodal distribution becomes bimodal for a particular time interval. However this bimodal distribution does not survive for a long time. It evolves into a monomodal distribution once again albeit with a mean size much greater than the initial mean size. This study may have important bearing on aerosol model development.