2003/07/31 by Michael Reichert, Holger Stark · 1 citation
Chemistry · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Electrostatics and Colloid Interactions #Material Dynamics and Properties #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.69.031407
published as Phys. Rev. E 69, 031407 (2004) · to be published in Phys. Rev. E
openalex publication_date 2004/03/01 · arxiv created 2004/03/15 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
We theoretically study in detail the hydrodynamic coupling of two equal-sized colloidal spheres at low Reynolds numbers assuming the particles to be harmonically trapped with respect to both their positions and orientations. By taking into account the rotational motion, we obtain a rich spectrum of collective eigenmodes whose properties we determine on the basis of pure symmetry arguments. Extending recent investigations on translational correlations [J.-C. Meiners and S. R. Quake, Phys. Rev. Lett. 82, 2211 (1999)], we derive the complete set of autocorrelation and cross-correlation functions emphasizing the coupling of rotation to translation which we illustrate in a few examples. An important feature of our system is the self-coupling of translation and rotation of one particle mediated by the neighboring particle that is clearly visible in the appropriate autocorrelation function. This coupling is a higher-order effect and therefore not included in the widely used Rotne-Prager approximation for the hydrodynamic mobilities.