Contributor info: Prof. Sergio Ciliberto

Ignacio A. Martinez, Artyom Petrosyan, Sergio Ciliberto

SciPost Phys. 15, 247 (2023) · published 20 December 2023 | Toggle abstract · pdf

Critical Casimir interactions represent a perfect example of bath-induced forces at mesoscales. These forces may have a relevant role in the living systems as well as a role in the design of nanomachines fueled by environmental fluctuations. Since the thermal fluctuations are enhanced in the vicinity of a demixing point of a second-order phase transition, we can modulate the magnitude and range of these Casimir-like forces by slight changes in the temperature. Here, we consider two optical trapped colloidal beads inside a binary mixture. The Casimir interaction is controlled by warming the mixture by laser-induced heating, whose local application ensures high reproducibility. Once this two-particle system is warmed, the critical behavior of different observables allows the system to become its self-thermometer. We use this experimental scheme for analyzing the energetics of a critical colloidal system under a non-equilibrium-driven protocol. We quantify how the injected work can be dissipated to the environment as heat or stored as free energy. Indeed, our system allows us to use the fluctuation theorems framework for analyzing the performance of this critically driven toy model. Our work paves the way for future experimental studies on the non-equilibrium features of bath-induced forces and the design of critically driven nanosystems.

Salambô Dago, Benjamin Besga, Raphaël Mothe, David Guéry-Odelin, Emmanuel Trizac, Artyom Petrosyan, Ludovic Bellon, Sergio Ciliberto

SciPost Phys. 9, 064 (2020) · published 5 November 2020 | Toggle abstract · pdf

We present a detailed theoretical and experimental analysis of Engineered Swift Equilibration (ESE) protocols applied to two hydrodynamically coupled colloids in optical traps. The second particle disturbs slightly (10% at most) the response to an ESE compression applied to a single particle. This effect is quantitatively explained by a model of hydrodynamic coupling. Then we design a coupled ESE protocol for the two particles, allowing the perfect control of one target particle while the second is enslaved to the first. The calibration errors and the limitations of the model are finally discussed in detail.