Abstract
We present a direct measurement of three-body interactions in a colloidal system comprised of three charged colloidal particles. Two of the particles have been confined by means of a scanned laser tweezers to a line-shaped optical trap where they diffused due to thermal fluctuations. Upon the approach of a third particle, attractive three-body interactions have been observed. The results are in qualitative agreement with additionally performed nonlinear Poisson-Boltzmann calculations, which also allow us to investigate the microionic density distributions in the neighborhood of the interacting colloidal particles.
- Received 13 August 2003
DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.69.031402
©2004 American Physical Society