Related papers: Dynamics of colloidal aggregation in microgravity …
Using general scaling arguments combined with mean-field theory we investigate the critical ($T \simeq T_c$) and off-critical ($T\ne T_c$) behavior of the Casimir forces in fluid films of thickness $L$ governed by dispersion forces and…
Microgravity experiments on board the International Space Station, combined with particle-resolved direct numerical simulations, were conducted to investigate the long-term flocculation behavior of clay suspensions in saline water in the…
Magnetic fields and magnetic materials have promising microfluidic applications. For example, magnetic micro-convection can enhance mixing considerably. However, previous studies have not explained increased effective diffusion during this…
We use field emission scanning electron microscope (FE-SEM) to investigate the growth of palladium colloids over the surface of thin films of WO3/glass. The film is prepared by Pulsed Laser Deposition (PLD) at different temperatures. A…
Experimental and simulation studies of superparamagnetic colloids in strong external fields have systematically shown an irreversible aggregation process in which chains of particles steadily grow and the average size increases with time as…
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…
Vacuum fluctuations are a fundamental and irremovable property of a quantized electromagnetic field. These fluctuations are the cause of the Casimir effect -- mutual attraction of two electrically neutral metallic plates in vacuum in the…
In many physical systems, degrees of freedom are coupled \emph{via} hydrodynamic forces, even in the absence of Hamiltonian interactions. A particularly important and widespread example concerns the transport of microscopic particles in…
We study a two-dimensional model for interacting colloidal particles which displays spontaneous clustering. Within this model we investigate the competition between the pinning to a periodic corrugation potential, and a sideways constant…
We present a systematic investigation of the distribution of normal forces at the boundaries of static packings of spheres. A new method for the efficient construction of large hexagonal-close-packed crystals is introduced and used to study…
We study the compaction and mobility properties of a dense granular material under weak random vibration. By putting in direct contact millimetric glass beads with piezoelectric transducers we manage to inject energy to the system in a…
The lateral Casimir force between a sinusoidally corrugated gold coated plate and large sphere was measured for surface separations between 0.2 $\mu$m to 0.3 $\mu$m using an atomic force microscope. The measured force shows the required…
We study far-from-equilibrium dynamics in models of freely cooling granular gas and ballistically aggregating compact clusters. For both the cases, from event driven molecular dynamics simulations we have presented detailed results on…
The normal Casimir force between a sinusoidally corrugated gold coated plate and a sphere was measured at various angles between the corrugations using an atomic force microscope. A strong dependence on the orientation angle of the…
We analyse the spatial inhomogeneities ('spatial clustering') in the distribution of particles accelerated by a force that changes randomly in space and time. To quantify spatial clustering, the phase-space dynamics of the particles must be…
Context: In protoplanetary disks, dust grains coagulate with each other and grow to form aggregates. As these aggregates grow by coagulation, their filling factor \phi decreases down to \phi << 1. However, comets, the remnants of these…
In this paper, we study the Casimir effect in a curved spacetime described by gravitational actions quadratic in the curvature. In particular, we consider the dynamics of a massless scalar field confined between two nearby plates and…
We consider a nematic liquid crystal confined by two parallel planar interfaces, one being laterally homogeneous and the other provided by a substrate endowed with a periodic chemical stripe pattern. Based on continuum theory we analyze the…
Thermal fluctuations of a critical system induce long-ranged Casimir forces between objects that couple to the underlying field. For two dimensional (2D) conformal field theories (CFT) we derive an exact result for the Casimir interaction…
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…