Related papers: Colloidal aggregation in microgravity by critical …
Mesoscopic particles immersed in a critical fluid experience long-range Casimir forces due to critical fluctuations. Using field theoretical methods, we investigate the Casimir interaction between two spherical particles and between a…
Using video-microscopy imaging we demonstrate the existence of a short-ranged equilibrium attraction between heavy silica colloids diffusing on soft surfaces of cross-linked polymer gels. The inter-colloid potential can be tuned by changing…
The measurement of the lateral Casimir force between two aligned sinusoidally corrugated Au-coated surfaces has been performed in the nonadditive regime. The use of deeper corrugations also allowed to demonstrate an asymmetry in the phase…
We consider the Casimir interaction between a cylinder and a hollow cylinder, both conducting, with parallel axis and slightly different radii. The Casimir force, which vanishes in the coaxial situation, is evaluated for both small and…
When massless excitations are limited or modified by the presence of material bodies one observes a force acting between them generally called Casimir force. Such excitations are present in any fluid system close to its true bulk critical…
Aggregation of ice particles is a fundamental process in the interstellar medium as well as in planet formation. Dedicated to study the contact physics of nm-ice particles we developed a thermal gradient force microscope. This allows us and…
Motivated by recent experiments with confined binary liquid mixtures near demixing, we study the universal critical properties of a system, which belongs to the Ising universality class, in the film geometry. We employ periodic boundary…
Dynamic characterization of mechanical properties of dust aggregates has been one of the most important problems to quantitatively discuss the dust growth in protoplanetary disks. We experimentally investigate the dynamic properties of dust…
We report measurements of the Casimir force between a gold sphere and a silicon surface with an array of nanoscale, rectangular corrugations using a micromechanical torsional oscillator. At distance between 150 nm and 500 nm, the measured…
When a colloidal suspension is dried, capillary pressure may overwhelm repulsive electrostatic forces, assembling aggregates that are out of thermal equilibrium. This poorly understood process confers cohesive strength to many geological…
Motivated by recent experiments on colloidal systems with competing attractive and repulsive interactions, we simulate a two-dimensional system of colloids with competing interactions that can undergo fragmentation. In the absence of any…
By using silicon oxide based aerogels we show numerically that the Casimir force can be reduced several orders of magnitude, making its effect negligible in nanodevices. This decrease in the Casimir force is also present even when the…
Aggregation of dust through sticking collisions is the first step of planet formation. Basic physical properties of the evolving dust aggregates strongly depend on the porosity of the aggregates, e.g. mechanical strength, thermal…
We theoretically study sedimentation-diffusion equilibrium of dilute binary, ternary, and polydisperse mixtures of colloidal particles with different buoyant masses and/or charges. We focus on the low-salt regime, where the entropy of the…
We review and assess a part of the recent work on Casimir apparatuses in the weak gravitational field of the Earth. For a free, real massless scalar field subject to Dirichlet or Neumann boundary conditions on the parallel plates, the…
The mechanical properties of aggregated colloids depend on the mutual interplay of inter-particle potentials, contact forces, aggregate structure and material properties of the bare particles. Owing to this variety of influences…
The Casimir force between metallic plates made of realistic materials is evaluated for distances in the nanometer range. A spectrum over real frequencies is introduced and shows narrow peaks due to surface resonances (plasmon polaritons or…
We report on measurements of the Casimir force in a sphere-plane geometry using a cryogenic force microscope to move the force probe in situ over different materials. We show how the electrostatic environment of the interacting surfaces…
We study experimentally and theoretically the sedimentation of gels made of strongly aggregated colloidal particles, focussing on the long time behavior, when mechanical equilibrium is asymptotically reached. The asymptotic gel height is…
Strong coupling between vacuum fields and quantum matter occurs at the nanoscale and broadens the horizon of light-matter interaction. Nanoscale Casimir force, as an exhibition of vacuum fields, inevitably experiences the influence of…