Analytical approach to sorting in periodic and random potentials

There has been a recent revolution in the ability to manipulate micrometer-sized objects on surfaces patterned by traps or obstacles of controllable configurations and shapes. One application of this technology is to separate particles driven across such a surface by an external force according to s...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Gleeson, James P., Sancho, Jose Maria, Lacasta Palacio, Ana María|||0000-0002-9060-6043, Lindenberg, K.
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2006
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya (UPC)
Repositorio:UPCommons. Portal del coneixement obert de la UPC
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:upcommons.upc.edu:2117/2493
Acceso en línea:https://hdl.handle.net/2117/2493
https://dx.doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.73.041102
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Statistical Mechanics
Condensed Matter
Soft condensed matter
Surfaces
Diffusion
Nonlinear systems
Nonlinear dynamics
Sorting
Periodic potentials
Random potentials
Matèria condensada
Física estadística
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Física
Àrees temàtiques de la UPC::Matemàtiques i estadística
Descripción
Sumario:There has been a recent revolution in the ability to manipulate micrometer-sized objects on surfaces patterned by traps or obstacles of controllable configurations and shapes. One application of this technology is to separate particles driven across such a surface by an external force according to some particle characteristic such as size or index of refraction. The surface features cause the trajectories of particles driven across the surface to deviate from the direction of the force by an amount that depends on the particular characteristic, thus leading to sorting. While models of this behavior have provided a good understanding of these observations, the solutions have so far been primarily numerical. In this paper we provide analytic predictions for the dependence of the angle between the direction of motion and the external force on a number of model parameters for periodic as well as random surfaces. We test these predictions against exact numerical simulations.