Three- and four-body interactions in colloidal systems
Soft Condensed Matter
2009-11-13 v1
Abstract
Three-body and four-body interactions have been directly measured in a colloidal system comprised of three (or four) charged colloidal particles. Two of the particles have been confined by means of a scanned laser tweezers to a line-shaped optical trap where they diffused due to thermal fluctuations. By means of an additional focused optical trap a third particle has been approached and attractive three-body interactions have been observed. These observations are in qualitative agreement with additionally performed nonlinear Poissson-Boltzmann calculations. Two configurations of four particles have been studied experimentally as well and in both cases a repulsive four-body interaction term has been observed.
Cite
@article{arxiv.0801.3920,
title = {Three- and four-body interactions in colloidal systems},
author = {J. Dobnikar and M. Brunner and Jörg Baumgartl and H. H. von Grünberg and C. Bechinger},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0801.3920},
year = {2009}
}