Revisiting Taylor Dispersion: Differential enhancement of rotational and translational diffusion under oscillatory shear

The idea of Taylor dispersion - enhancement of translational diffusion under shear - has found applications in fields from pharmacology to chemical engineering. Here, in a combination of experiment and simulations, we study the translational and rotational diffusion of colloidal dimers under triangle-wave oscillatory shear. We find that the rotational diffusion is enhanced, in addition to the enhanced translational diffusion. This ``rotational Taylor dispersion'' depends strongly on the strain rate (Peclet number), aspect ratio, and the shear strain, in contradistinction to translational Taylor dispersion in a shear flow, which depends only weakly on strain rate and aspect ratio. This separate tunability of translations and orientations promises important applications in mixing and self-assembly of solutions of anisometric colloids. We discuss the corresponding effect on the structure and rheology of denser suspensions of rod-like particles.