Structural nonequilibrium forces in driven colloidal systems
Soft Condensed Matter
2026-04-08 v1 Fluid Dynamics
Abstract
We identify a structural one-body force field that sustains spatial inhomogeneities in nonequilibrium overdamped Brownian many-body systems. The structural force is perpendicular to the local flow direction, it is free of viscous dissipation, it is microscopically resolved in both space and and time, and it can stabilize density gradients. From the time evolution in the exact (Smoluchowski) low-density limit, Brownian dynamics simulations and a novel power functional approximation, we obtain a quantitative understanding of viscous and structural forces, including memory and shear migration.
Cite
@article{arxiv.1811.02019,
title = {Structural nonequilibrium forces in driven colloidal systems},
author = {Nex C. X. Stuhlmüller and Tobias Eckert and Daniel de las Heras and Matthias Schmidt},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:1811.02019},
year = {2026}
}