Related papers: Many-body critical Casimir interactions in colloid…
Colloids immersed in a critical or near-critical binary liquid mixture and close to a chemically patterned substrate are subject to normal and lateral critical Casimir forces of dominating strength. For a single colloid we calculate these…
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 calculate the scaling functions associated with critical Casimir forces for a system consisting of two spherical colloids immersed in a binary liquid mixture near its consolute point and facing a planar,…
We study the melting behavior of charged colloidal crystals, using a simulation technique that combines a continuous mean-field Poisson-Boltzmann description for the microscopic electrolyte ions with a Brownian-dynamics simulation for the…
In any medium there are fluctuations due to temperature or due to the quantum nature of its constituents. If a material body is immersed into such a medium, its shape and the properties of its constituents modify the properties of the…
Critical Casimir interactions represent a perfect example of bath-induced forces at mesoscales. These forces may have a relevant role in the living systems as well as a role in the design of nanomachines fueled by environmental…
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…
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…
Percolation and critical phenomena show common features such as scaling and universality. Colloidal particles, immersed in a solvent close to criticality, experience long-range effective forces, named critical Casimir forces. %These…
From experimental studies it is well-known that colloidal particles suspended in a near-critical binary solvent exhibit interesting aggregation phenomena, often associated with colloidal phase transitions, and assumed to be driven by…
$\mathrm{O}(N)$ vector models in three dimensions, when defined in a geometry with a compact direction and tuned to criticality, exhibit long-range fluctuations which induce a Casimir effect. The strength of the resulting interaction is…
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…
Using a lattice model and a versatile thermodynamic integration scheme, we study the critical Casimir interactions between inclusions embedded in a two-dimensional critical binary mixtures. For single-domain inclusions we demonstrate that…
Recent experiments have demonstrated a fluctuation-induced lateral trapping of spherical colloidal particles immersed in a binary liquid mixture near its critical demixing point and exposed to chemically patterned substrates. Inspired by…
Within the framework of a discrete Gaussian model, we present analytical results for the interaction induced by a lamellar phase between small embedded colloids. We consider the two limits of particles strongly adherent to the adjacent…
Spatial confinement of a near-critical medium changes its fluctuation spectrum and modifies the corresponding order parameter distribution. These effects result in effective, so-called critical Casimir forces (CCFs) acting on the confining…
We study theoretically and experimentally the solvent-mediated critical Casimir force acting on colloidal particles immersed in a binary liquid mixture of water and 2,6-lutidine and close to substrates which are chemically patterned with…
Recent experiments suggest that membranes of living cells are tuned close to a miscibility critical point in the 2D Ising universality class. We propose that one role for this proximity to criticality in live cells is to provide a conduit…
Three-body and four-body interactions have been directly measured in a colloidal system comprised of three (or four) charged colloidal particles. Two of the particles have been confined by means of a scanned laser tweezers to a line-shaped…
The confinement of critical fluctuations in soft media induces critical Casimir forces acting on the confining surfaces. The temperature and geometry dependences of such forces are characterized by universal scaling functions. A novel…