2003/12/16 by Yilong Han, David G. Grier
Chemistry · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Advanced Thermodynamics and Statistical Mechanics #Charge (physics) #Chemical physics #Chemistry #Colloid #Computer science #Condensed matter physics #Consistency (knowledge bases) #Material Dynamics and Properties #Materials science #Monolayer #Nanotechnology #Physical chemistry #Physics #Quantum mechanics #SPHERES #Spectroscopy and Quantum Chemical Studies #Statistical physics #Thermodynamics #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.92.148301
4 pages, 3 figures
arxiv created 2003/12/16 · openalex publication_date 2004/04/08 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Recent theoretical advances show that the temperature of a system in equilibrium can be measured from static snapshots of its constituents' instantaneous configurations, without regard to their dynamics. We report the first measurements of the configurational temperature in an experimental system. In particular, we introduce a hierarchy of hyperconfigurational temperature definitions, which we use to analyze monolayers of charge-stabilized colloidal spheres. Equality of the hyperconfigurational and bulk thermodynamic temperatures provides previously lacking thermodynamic self-consistency checks for the measured colloidal pair potentials, and thereby casts new light on anomalous like-charge colloidal attractions induced by geometric confinement.