2004/02/19 by M. Brunner, Matthias Brünner, Jure Dobnikar +5 · 2 citations
Chemistry · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Electrostatics and Colloid Interactions #Microfluidic and Bio-sensing Technologies #Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.92.078301
published as Phys.Rev. Lett. 92 (7), 078301 (2004)
openalex publication_date 2004/02/19 · arxiv created 2008/01/25 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Three-body interactions amongst three charged colloidal particles are measured in a deionized aqueous solution. Two of the particles are confined to an optical line trap while the third one is approached by means of a focused laser beam. From the observed particle configurations we extract the three-body potential which is found to be attractive and roughly of the same magnitude and range as the pair interactions. In addition, numerical calculations are performed which show qualitative agreement with the experimental results.