Related papers: Self assembly of microparticles in stable ring str…
We present experimental measurements on the spontaneous formation of compact spiral structures in vertically-vibrated granular chains. Under weak vibration, when the chain is quasi two-dimensional and self-avoiding, spiral structures emerge…
Beams of light with helical wavefronts can be focused into ring-like optical traps known as optical vortices. The orbital angular momentum carried by photons in helical modes can be transferred to trapped mesoscopic objects and thereby…
We study the self-assembly behaviour of patchy particles with `protein-like' interactions that can be considered as a minimal model for the assembly of viral capsids and other shell-like protein complexes. We thoroughly explore the…
Motivated by the idea of using simple macroscopic examples to illustrate the physics of complex systems, we modify a historic experimental setup in which interacting floating magnets spontaneously self-assemble into ordered clusters. By…
Colloidal particles can self-assemble into various ordered structures in fluid flows that have potential applications in biomedicine, materials synthesis and encryption. These dynamic processes are also of fundamental interest for probing…
While the alignment and rotation of microparticles in optical traps have received increased attention recently, one of the earliest examples has been almost totally neglected the alignment of particles relative to the beam axis, as opposed…
After rainfall, pine needles often float on the surface of small puddles. As the water evaporates, they self-assemble into distinct clusters. Motivated by this natural phenomenon, we experimentally investigate the dynamic evolution of…
Building structures with hierarchical order through the self-assembly of smaller blocks is not only a prerogative of nature, but also a strategy to design artificial materials with tailored functions. We explore in simulation the…
Tightly confined modes of light, as in optical nanofibers or photonic crystal waveguides, can lead to large optical coupling in atomic systems, which mediates long-range interactions between atoms. These one-dimensional systems can…
Rigorous understanding of the self-assembly of colloidal nanocrystals is crucial to the development of tailored nanostructured materials. Despite extensive studies, a mechanistic understanding of self-assembly under non-equilibrium driven…
Standard optical tweezers rely on optical forces that arise when a focused laser beam interacts with a microscopic particle: scattering forces, which push the particle along the beam direction, and gradient forces, which attract it towards…
We study the spontaneous generation and evolution of bending waves in $N$-body simulations of two isolated Milky Way-like galaxy models. The models differ by their disc-to-halo mass ratios, and hence by their susceptibility to the formation…
We study the threshold conditions of spatial self organization combined with collective coherent optical backscattering of a thermal gaseous beam moving in a high Q ring cavity with counter propagating pump. We restrict ourselves to the…
We develop a dynamical theory for the origin of nuclear rings in barred galaxies. In analogy with the standard theory of accretion discs, our theory is based on shear viscous forces among nested annuli of gas. However, the fact that gas…
Self-assembled monolayers of microparticles encoding Archimedean and non-regular tessellations promise unprecedented structure-property relationships for a wide spectrum of applications in fields ranging from optoelectronics to surface…
The assembly of filamentous bundles with controlled diameters is common in biological systems and desirable for the development of nanomaterials. We discuss dynamical simulations and free energy calculations on patchy spheres with chiral…
Inspired by recent developments in self-assembled chiral nanostructures, we have explored the possibility of using spherical particles packed in cylinders as building blocks for chiral photonic crystals. In particular, we focused on an…
In the field of microdroplet manipulation, optical tweezers have been used to form and grow droplets, to transport them, or to measure forces between droplet pairs. However, the exploration of out-of-equilibrium phenomena in optically…
Trapping and un-trapping of spiral tips in a two-dimensional homogeneous excitable medium with local small-world connections is studied by numerical simulation. In a homogeneous medium which can be simulated with a lattice of regular…
We report on experiments with a microfabricated surface trap designed for trapping a chain of ions in a ring. Uniform ion separation over most of the ring is achieved with a rotationally symmetric design and by measuring and suppressing…