2,505 research outputs found
Criticality and phase separation in a two-dimensional binary colloidal fluid induced by the solvent critical behavior
We present an experimental and theoretical study of the phase behavior of a
binary mixture of colloids with opposite adsorption preferences in a critical
solvent. As a result of the attractive and repulsive critical Casimir forces,
the critical fluctuations of the solvent lead to a further critical point in
the colloidal system, i.e. to a critical colloidal-liquid--colloidal-liquid
demixing phase transition which is controlled by the solvent temperature. Our
experimental findings are in good agreement with calculations based on a simple
approximation for the free energy of the system.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, to be published in Europhysics Letter
Tunability of Critical Casimir Interactions by Boundary Conditions
We experimentally demonstrate that critical Casimir forces in colloidal
systems can be continuously tuned by the choice of boundary conditions. The
interaction potential of a colloidal particle in a mixture of water and
2,6-lutidine has been measured above a substrate with a gradient in its
preferential adsorption properties for the mixture's components. We find that
the interaction potentials at constant temperature but different positions
relative to the gradient continuously change from attraction to repulsion. This
demonstrates that critical Casimir forces respond not only to minute
temperature changes but also to small changes in the surface properties.Comment: 4 figures;
http://www.iop.org/EJ/article/0295-5075/88/2/26001/epl_88_2_26001.htm
Critical Casimir effect in classical binary liquid mixtures
If a fluctuating medium is confined, the ensuing perturbation of its
fluctuation spectrum generates Casimir-like effective forces acting on its
confining surfaces. Near a continuous phase transition of such a medium the
corresponding order parameter fluctuations occur on all length scales and
therefore close to the critical point this effect acquires a universal
character, i.e., to a large extent it is independent of the microscopic details
of the actual system. Accordingly it can be calculated theoretically by
studying suitable representative model systems.
We report on the direct measurement of critical Casimir forces by total
internal reflection microscopy (TIRM), with femto-Newton resolution. The
corresponding potentials are determined for individual colloidal particles
floating above a substrate under the action of the critical thermal noise in
the solvent medium, constituted by a binary liquid mixture of water and
2,6-lutidine near its lower consolute point. Depending on the relative
adsorption preferences of the colloid and substrate surfaces with respect to
the two components of the binary liquid mixture, we observe that, upon
approaching the critical point of the solvent, attractive or repulsive forces
emerge and supersede those prevailing away from it. Based on the knowledge of
the critical Casimir forces acting in film geometries within the Ising
universality class and with equal or opposing boundary conditions, we provide
the corresponding theoretical predictions for the sphere-planar wall geometry
of the experiment. The experimental data for the effective potential can be
interpreted consistently in terms of these predictions and a remarkable
quantitative agreement is observed.Comment: 30 pages, 17 figure
Normal and lateral critical Casimir forces between colloids and patterned substrates
We study the normal and lateral effective critical Casimir forces acting on a
spherical colloid immersed in a critical binary solvent and close to a
chemically structured substrate with alternating adsorption preference. We
calculate the universal scaling function for the corresponding potential and
compare our results with recent experimental data [Soyka F., Zvyagolskaya O.,
Hertlein C., Helden L., and Bechinger C., Phys. Rev. Lett., 101, 208301
(2008)]. The experimental potentials are properly captured by our predictions
only by accounting for geometrical details of the substrate pattern for which,
according to our theory, critical Casimir forces turn out to be a sensitive
probe.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figure
Critical Casimir effect in films for generic non-symmetry-breaking boundary conditions
Systems described by an O(n) symmetrical Hamiltonian are considered
in a -dimensional film geometry at their bulk critical points. A detailed
renormalization-group (RG) study of the critical Casimir forces induced between
the film's boundary planes by thermal fluctuations is presented for the case
where the O(n) symmetry remains unbroken by the surfaces. The boundary planes
are assumed to cause short-ranged disturbances of the interactions that can be
modelled by standard surface contributions corresponding
to subcritical or critical enhancement of the surface interactions. This
translates into mesoscopic boundary conditions of the generic
symmetry-preserving Robin type .
RG-improved perturbation theory and Abel-Plana techniques are used to compute
the -dependent part of the reduced excess free energy per
film area to two-loop order. When , it takes the scaling
form as
, where are scaling fields associated with the
surface-enhancement variables , while is a standard
surface crossover exponent. The scaling function
and its analogue for the Casimir force
are determined via expansion in and extrapolated to
dimensions. In the special case , the expansion
becomes fractional. Consistency with the known fractional expansions of D(0,0)
and to order is achieved by appropriate
reorganisation of RG-improved perturbation theory. For appropriate choices of
and , the Casimir forces can have either sign. Furthermore,
crossovers from attraction to repulsion and vice versa may occur as
increases.Comment: Latex source file, 40 pages, 9 figure
Critical Casimir forces and adsorption profiles in the presence of a chemically structured substrate
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 conditions in the two lateral directions and fixed boundary conditions
on the two confining surfaces, such that one of them has a spatially
homogeneous adsorption preference while the other one exhibits a laterally
alternating adsorption preference, resembling locally a single chemical step.
By means of Monte Carlo simulations of an improved Hamiltonian, so that the
leading scaling corrections are suppressed, numerical integration, and
finite-size scaling analysis we determine the critical Casimir force and its
universal scaling function for various values of the aspect ratio of the film.
In the limit of a vanishing aspect ratio the critical Casimir force of this
system reduces to the mean value of the critical Casimir force for laterally
homogeneous ++ and +- boundary conditions, corresponding to the surface spins
on the two surfaces being fixed to equal and opposite values, respectively. We
show that the universal scaling function of the critical Casimir force for
small but finite aspect ratios displays a linear dependence on the aspect ratio
which is solely due to the presence of the lateral inhomogeneity. We also
analyze the order-parameter profiles at criticality and their universal scaling
function which allows us to probe theoretical predictions and to compare with
experimental data.Comment: revised version, section 5.2 expanded; 53 pages, 12 figures, iopart
clas
Nonadditivity of critical Casimir forces
In soft condensed matter physics, effective interactions often emerge due to the spatial confinement of fluctuating fields. For instance, microscopic particles dissolved in a binary liquid mixture are subject to critical Casimir forces whenever their surfaces confine the thermal fluctuations of the order parameter of the solvent close to its critical demixing point. These forces are theoretically predicted to be nonadditive on the scale set by the bulk correlation length of the fluctuations. Here we provide direct experimental evidence of this fact by reporting the measurement of the associated many-body forces. We consider three colloidal particles in optical traps and observe that the critical Casimir force exerted on one of them by the other two differs from the sum of the forces they exert separately. This three-body effect depends sensitively on the distance from the critical point and on the chemical functionalisation of the colloid surfaces
An update on site search activities for SWGO
The Southern Wide-field Gamma-ray Observatory (SWGO) is a project by
scientists and engineers from 14 countries and 78 institutions to design and
build the first wide-field, ground-based gamma-ray observatory in the Southern
Hemisphere, with high duty cycle and covering an energy range rom hundreds of
GeV to the PeV scale. The observatory will cover the Southern sky and aims to
map the Galaxy's large-scale emission, as well as detecting transient and
variable phenomena. The host sites under consideration are at a minimum
altitude of 4400 m.a.s.l. and comprise two types: flat plateaus of at least 1
km for the installation of an array of tank-based water Cherenkov
detectors (WCD), or large natural lakes for the direct deployment of WCD units.
Four South American countries proposed excellent sites to host the observatory
meeting these requirements. Argentina proposed two locations in the Salta
province, Bolivia presented one site in Chacaltaya, Chile two locations within
the Atacama Astronomical Park, and Peru two ground-based locations in the
Arequipa district as well as lakes in the Cuzco region. The SWGO collaboration
is currently conducting a site characterization study, gathering all the
necessary information for site shortlisting and final site selection by the end
of 2023. The process has reached the shortlisting phase, in which primary and
backup sites for each country have been identified. The primary sites were
visited by a team of experts from the collaboration, to investigate and
validate the proposed site characteristics. Here we present an update on these
site selection activities.Comment: In Proceedings of the 2023 ICRC, Nagoya, Japa
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