0000000000916687
AUTHOR
Christoph Lutz
Diffusion of colloids in one-dimensional light channels
Single-file diffusion (SFD), prevalent in many chemical and biological processes, refers to the one-dimensional motion of interacting particles in pores which are so narrow that the mutual passage of particles is excluded. Since the sequence of particles in such a situation remains unaffected over time t, this leads to strong deviations from normal diffusion, e.g. an increase of the particle mean-square-displacement as the square root of t. We present experimental results of the diffusive behaviour of colloidal particles in one-dimensional channels with varying particle density. The channels are realized by means of a scanning optical tweezers. Based on a new analytical approach (Kollmann 2…
Single-File Diffusion of Colloids in One-Dimensional Channels
We study the diffusive behavior of colloidal particles which are confined to one-dimensional channels generated by scanning optical tweezers. At long times t, the mean-square displacement is found to scale as t(1/2), which is expected for systems where single-file diffusion occurs. In addition, we experimentally obtain the long-time, self-diffusive behavior from the short-time collective density fluctuations of the system as suggested by a recent analytical approach [Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 180602 (2003)]. published