Surfactant Curvilinear Diffusion in Giant Wormlike Micelles

We present the first experimental measurements of surfactant curvilinear diffusion in giant wormlike micelles. The surfactant diffusion was monitored by pulsed field gradient NMR for various observation times $t$ ranging from 0.020 to 1.5 s. The surfactant mean-square displacement was found to scale as $t^{1/2}$. A model of lateral diffusion along wormlike micellar aggregates with Gaussian statistics is found to describe the echo attenuation well. This type of diffusion is analogous to polymer segment diffusion in the tube-reptation model.