8 research outputs found
Nonconservative forcing and diffusion in refractive optical traps
Refractive optical trapping forces can be nonconservative in the vicinity of
a stable equilibrium point even in the absence of radiation pressure. We
discuss how nonconservative 3D force fields, in the vicinity of an equilibrium
point, reduce to circular forcing in a plane; a simple model of such forcing is
the refractive trapping of a sphere by a four rays. We discuss in general the
diffusion of an anisotropically trapped, circularly forced particle and obtain
its spectrum of motion. Equipartition of potential energy holds even though the
nonconservative flow does not follow equipotentials of the trap. We find that
the dissipated nonconservative power is proportional to temperature, providing
a mechanism for a runaway heating instability in traps.Comment: To appear in the Journal of the Optical Society of America
Locating the source of projectile fluid droplets
The ill-posed projectile problem of finding the source height from spattered
droplets of viscous fluid is a longstanding obstacle to accident reconstruction
and crime scene analysis. It is widely known how to infer the impact angle of
droplets on a surface from the elongation of their impact profiles. However,
the lack of velocity information makes finding the height of the origin from
the impact position and angle of individual drops not possible. From aggregate
statistics of the spatter and basic equations of projectile motion, we
introduce a reciprocal correlation plot that is effective when the polar launch
angle is concentrated in a narrow range. The vertical coordinate depends on the
orientation of the spattered surface, and equals the tangent of the impact
angle for a level surface. When the horizontal plot coordinate is twice the
reciprocal of the impact distance, we can infer the source height as the slope
of the data points in the reciprocal correlation plot. If the distribution of
launch angles is not narrow, failure of the method is evident in the lack of
linear correlation. We perform a number of experimental trials, as well as
numerical calculations and show that the height estimate is insensitive to
aerodynamic drag. Besides its possible relevance for crime investigation,
reciprocal-plot analysis of spatter may find application to volcanism and other
topics and is most immediately applicable for undergraduate science and
engineering students in the context of crime-scene analysis.Comment: To appear in the American Journal of Physics (ms 23338). Improved
readability and organization in this versio
Fluctuation-dissipation theorem in an aging colloidal glass
We provide a direct experimental test of the Stokes-Einstein relation as a
special case of the fluctuation-dissipation theorem (FDT) in an aging colloidal
glass. The use of combined active and passive microrheology allows us to
independently measure both the correlation and response functions in this
non-equilibrium situation. Contrary to previous reports, we find no deviations
from the FDT over several decades in frequency (1 Hz-10 kHz) and for all aging
times. In addition, we find two distinct viscoelastic contributions in the
aging glass, including a nearly elastic response at low frequencies that grows
during aging. This is the clearest change in material properties of the system
with aging.Comment: 5 pages,4 figure