Sedimentation and Effective Temperature of Active Colloidal Suspensions
Condensed Matter journal club
Sedimentation and Effective Temperature of Active Colloidal Suspensions
- Event time: 11:30am
- Event date: 10th February 2012
- Speaker: Rim Harich (Formerly School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)
- Location: Room 2511, James Clerk Maxwell Building (JCMB) James Clerk Maxwell Building Peter Guthrie Tait Road Edinburgh EH9 3FD GB
Event details
Abstract
In this Letter, we investigate experimentally the nonequilibrium steady state of an active colloidal suspension under gravity field. The active particles are made of chemically powered colloids, showing self propulsion in the presence of an added fuel, here hydrogen peroxide. The active suspension is studied in a dedicated microfluidic device, made of permeable gel microstructures. Both the microdynamics of individual colloids and the global stationary state of the suspension under gravity are measured with optical microscopy. This yields a direct measurement of the effective temperature of the active system as a function of the particle activity, on the basis of the fluctuation-dissipation relationship. Our work is a first step in the experimental exploration of the out-of-equilibrium properties of active colloidal systems.PRL vol. 105, article 088304 (2010)
pdf version of paper
Authors
Jeremie Palacci, Cecile Cottin-Bizonne, Christophe Ybert, and Lyderic Bocquet
About Condensed Matter journal club
Given the diversity of research in the CM group, chosen topics vary widely. We tend to stick to high-impact journals - Nature, Science, PNAS and PRL have been popular - but this is not prescriptive..