Critical force in active microrheology

M. Gruber, A. M. Puertas, and M. Fuchs
Phys. Rev. E 101, 012612 – Published 30 January 2020

Abstract

Soft solids like colloidal glasses exhibit a yield stress, above which the system starts to flow. The microscopic analogon in microrheology is the untrapping or depinning of a tracer particle subject to an external force exceeding a threshold value in a glassy host. We characterize this delocalization transition based on a bifurcation analysis of the corresponding mode-coupling theory equations. A schematic model that allows analytical progress is presented first, and the full physical model is studied numerically next. This analysis yields a continuous dynamic transition with a critical power-law decay of the probe correlation functions with exponent 1/2. To compare with simulations with a limited duration, a finite-time analysis is performed, which yields reasonable results for not-too-small wave vectors. The theoretically predicted findings are verified by Langevin dynamics simulations. For small wave vectors we find anomalous behavior for the probe position correlation function, which can be traced back to a wave-vector divergence of the critical amplitude. In addition, we propose and test three methods to extract the critical force from experimental data, which provide the same value of the critical force when applied to the finite-time theory or simulations.

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  • Received 23 October 2019

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.101.012612

©2020 American Physical Society

Physics Subject Headings (PhySH)

Polymers & Soft MatterFluid DynamicsStatistical Physics & ThermodynamicsCondensed Matter, Materials & Applied Physics

Authors & Affiliations

M. Gruber1, A. M. Puertas2, and M. Fuchs1,*

  • 1Fachbereich Physik, Universität Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany
  • 2Departamento de Física Aplicada, Universidad de Almería, 04.120 Almería, Spain

  • *matthias.fuchs@uni-konstanz.de

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Vol. 101, Iss. 1 — January 2020

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