Related papers: Lateral and normal forces between patterned substr…
Fluctuations of the thermal or classical component of the van der Waals force between two dielectric slabs, modelled as an ensemble of polarizable dipoles which interact via the usual electrostatic dipole-dipole interaction, are evaluated.…
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…
Two interaction mechanisms of particles in a fluid are proposed on base of forces, mediated by hydrodynamic thermal fluctuations. The first one is similar to the conventional van der Waals interaction, but instead of been mediated by…
We report on the effect of intermolecular forces on the fluctuations of supported liquid films. Using an optically-induced thermal gradient, we form nanometer-thin films of wetting liquids on glass substrates, where van der Waals forces are…
We examine whether fluctuation-induced forces can lead to stable levitation. First, we analyze a collection of classical objects at finite temperature that contain fixed and mobile charges, and show that any arrangement in space is unstable…
Thermal fluctuations in non-equilibrium steady states generically lead to power law decay of correlations for conserved quantities. Embedded bodies which constrain fluctuations in turn experience fluctuation induced forces. We compute these…
We examine fluctuation-induced (pseudo-Casimir) interactions in nematic liquid-crystalline films confined between two surfaces, where one of the surfaces imposes a strong homeotropic anchoring (ensuring a uniform mean director profile),…
In our study we investigate the behaviour of the net force (NF) emerging between an ellipsoidal particle and a thick plate (slab), when the interaction takes place in a near critical fluid medium with account for the omnipresent van der…
The retarded Van der Waals force between a polarizable particle and a perfectly conducting plate is re-examined. The expression for this force given by Casimir and Polder represents a mean force, but there are large fluctuations around this…
We consider the contribution of thermal capillary waves to the interaction between a fluid-fluid interface and a nearby nanoparticle. Fluctuations are described thanks to an effective interaction potential which is derived using the…
We experimentally study the fluctuations of the work done by an external Gaussian random force on two different stochastic systems coupled to a thermal bath: a colloidal particle in an optical trap and an atomic force microscopy cantilever.…
Fluctuations in fluid velocity and fluctuations in electric fields may both give rise to forces acting on small particles in colloidal suspensions. Such forces in part determine the thermodynamic stability of the colloid. At the classical…
We consider directed semiflexible polymers embedded in a fluctuating surface which is governed by either surface tension or bending rigidity. The attractive interactions induced by the fluctuations of the surface reduce the rigidity of the…
Here, we demonstrate that vacuum fluctuations can induce lateral forces on a small particle positioned near a translation-invariant uniform non-Hermitian substrate with chiral gain. This type of non-Hermitian response can be engineered by…
We analyze the fluctuations in particle positions and inter-particle forces in disordered jammed crystals in the limit of weak disorder. We demonstrate that such athermal systems are fundamentally different from their thermal counterparts,…
We characterize the fluctuation properties of a polymer chain under external tension and the fluctuation-induced forces between two ring molecules threaded around the chain. The problem is relevant in the context of fluctuation-induced…
Within the macroscopic Landau-de Gennes approach, we examine the Gaussian normal mode fluctuations of semi-infinite nematic liquid crystals in a regime of critical wetting. It is argued that surface free-energy potentials that strongly…
We study the impact of nematic alignment on scalar active matter in the disordered phase. We show that nematic torques control the emergent physics of particles interacting via pairwise forces and can either induce or prevent phase…
Glasses are mechanically rigid, still undergo structural relaxation which changes their properties and affects potential technological applications. Understanding the underlying physical processes is a problem of broad theoretical and…
In pure anisotropic or layered superconductors thermal fluctuations induce a van der Waals attraction between flux lines. This attraction together with the entropic repulsion has interesting consequences for the low field phase diagram; in…