Related papers: Normal and lateral critical Casimir forces between…
We consider an ensemble of spherical colloidal particles immersed in a near-critical solvent such as a binary liquid mixture close to its critical demixing point. The emerging long-ranged fluctuations of the corresponding order parameter of…
In confined systems near a continuous phase transition the long-ranged fluctuations of the corresponding order parameter are subject to boundary conditions. These constraints result in so-called critical Casimir forces acting as effective…
We present a numerical study of the effective potential $V_\mathrm{eff}$ between two hard-sphere colloids dispersed in a solvent of interacting particles, for several values of temperature and solvent density, approaching the solvent…
Within mean field theory, we investigate the bridging transition between a pair of parallel cylindrical colloids immersed in a binary liquid mixture as a solvent which is close to its critical consolute point $T_c$. We determine the…
We study critical Casimir forces between planar walls and geometrically structured substrates within mean-field theory. As substrate structures, crenellated surfaces consisting of periodic arrays of rectangular crenels and merlons are…
Based on renormalization group concepts and explicit mean field calculations we study the universal contribution to the effective force and torque acting on an ellipsoidal colloidal particle which is dissolved in a critical fluid and is…
We study the critical Casimir force for a film geometry in the Ising universality class. We employ a homogeneous adsorption preference on one of the confining surfaces, while the opposing surface exhibits quenched random disorder, leading…
Colloids immersed in a critical binary liquid mixture are subject to critical Casimir forces (CCFs) because they confine its concentration fluctuations and influence the latter via effective surface fields. To date, CCFs have only been…
The confinement of long-ranged critical fluctuations in the vicinity of second-order phase transitions in fluids generates critical Casimir forces acting on confining surfaces or among particles immersed in a critical solvent. This is…
We review recent advances in the theoretical, numerical, and experimental studies of critical Casimir forces in soft matter, with particular emphasis on their relevance for the structures of colloidal suspensions and on their dynamics.…
An exact statistical mechanical derivation is given of the critical Casimir interactions between two defects in a planar lattice-gas Ising model. Each defect is a group of nearest-neighbor spins with modified coupling constants. Such a…
If colloidal solute particles are suspended in a solvent close to its critical point, they act as cavities in a fluctuating medium and thereby restrict and modify the fluctuation spectrum in a way which depends on their relative…
We present a systematic method to calculate the universal scaling functions for the critical Casimir force and the according potential of the two-dimensional Ising model with various boundary conditions. Therefore we start with the dimer…
Critical Casimir forces emerge between objects, such as colloidal particles, whenever their surfaces spatially confine the fluctuations of the order parameter of a critical liquid used as a solvent. These forces act at short but…
We study the behavior of the critical Casimir force and its interplay with the van der Waals force acting between two parallel slabs separated at a distance $L$ from each other confining a non-polar simple fluid or a binary liquid mixture.…
We consider binary liquid mixtures close to their critical points confined by two parallel, geometrically flat but chemically structured, substrates. Universal order parameters profiles are calculated within mean field theory for periodic…
In soft and condensed matter physics, effective interactions often emerge as a result of the spatial confinement of a fluctuating field. For instance, microscopic particles in a binary liquid mixture are subject to critical Casimir forces…
We discuss recent experimental and theoretical results on the Casimir force between real material bodies made of different materials. Special attention is paid to calculations of the normal Casimir force acting perpendicular to the surface…
Recently there is strong experimental and theoretical interest in studying the self-assembly and the phase behavior of patchy and of Janus particles, which form colloidal suspensions. Although in this quest a variety of effective…
We show that critical Casimir effects can be accessed through direct simulation of a model binary fluid passing through the demixing transition. We work in the semi grand canonical ensemble, in slab geometry, in which the Casimir force…