Related papers: Defining Contact at the Atomic Scale
Hard spheres are ubiquitous in condensed matter: they have been used as models for liquids, crystals, colloidal systems, granular systems, and powders. Packings of hard spheres are of even wider interest, as they are related to important…
The contact process is a paradigmatic classical stochastic system displaying critical behavior even in one dimension. It features a non-equilibrium phase transition into an absorbing state that has been widely investigated and shown to…
Molecular dynamics simulations have been performed to understand true atomic resolution, which has been observed on the Si(111)-7$\times$7 surface by dynamic force microscopy in ultra high vacuum(UHV). Stable atomic-scale contrast is…
Precision spectroscopy has long played a central role in testing the foundations of physics, from the early insights that led to the development of quantum mechanics to the validation of quantum electrodynamics and the determination of…
Light is known to exert radiation pressure on any surface it is incident upon, via the transfer of momentum from the light to the surface. In general, this force is assumed to be pushing or repulsive in nature. In this paper, we present a…
Inspired by the turf-ball interaction in golf, this paper seeks to understand the bounce of a ball that can be modelled as a rigid sphere and the surface as supplying an elasto-plastic contact force in addition to Coulomb friction. A…
We assume that the sample height measured using AFM is reduced due to contact deformation. The Herz contact theory is applied for the quantitative description. General numerical solution is found. Analytical approximations for specific…
We develop an analytical model of adhesive wear between two unlubricated rough surfaces, forming micro-contacts under normal load. The model is based on an energy balance and a crack initiation criteria. We apply the model to the problem of…
Current engineering wear models are often based on empirical parameters rather than built upon physical considerations. Here, we look for a physical description of adhesive wear at the microscale, at which the interaction between two…
We explore the pressure of active particles on curved surfaces and its relation to other interfacial properties. We use both direct simulations of the active systems as well as simulations of an equilibrium system with effective (pair)…
Quantum stochastic differential equations have been used to describe the dynamics of an atom interacting with the electromagnetic field via absorption/emission processes. Here, by using the full quantum stochastic Schroedinger equation…
Application of the principle of energy balance to a rigid indenter in contact with elastic layer on a flat rigid substrate provides a very simple derivation of the detachment criterion which earlier has been obtained by much more…
Amorphous media at finite temperatures, be them liquids, colloids or glasses, are made of interacting particles that move chaotically due to thermal energy, colliding and scattering continuously off each other. When the average…
The theory of scattering of atom pairs in a periodic potential is presented for the case of different atoms. When the scattering dynamics is restricted to the lowest Bloch band of the periodic potential, a separation in relative and average…
The unconventional thermal properties of jammed amorphous solids are directly related to their density of vibrational states. While the vibrational spectrum of jammed soft sphere solids has been fully described, the vibrational spectrum of…
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the capillary adhesion from a nonvolatile liquid meniscus between a spherical tip and a flat substrate. The atomic structure of the tip, the tip radius, the contact angles of the liquid on…
The control of energy dissipation in non-spherical particle contact remains an unresolved problem. Unlike spherical contact, where the interaction reduces to a one-dimensional normal oscillator, both the effective inertia and the effective…
Previous and present "academic" research aiming at atomic scale understanding is mainly concerned with the study of individual molecular processes possibly underlying materials science applications. Appealing properties of an individual…
Accurate measurements of the thermal resistance between micro-objects made of insulating materials are complex because of their small size, low conductivity, and the presence of various ill-defined gaps. We address this issue using a…
We consider a liquid drop sitting on a rough solid surface at equilibrium, a volume constrained minimizer of the total interfacial energy. The large-scale shape of such a drop strongly depends on the micro-structure of the solid surface.…