Brownian Motion in a Colloidal Glass

Pierre Jop (1) , Artyom Petrosyan (1) , Sergio Ciliberto (2)

1 ENSL, Laboratoire de Physique
2 Laboratoire de Physique

We study the Brownian motion of particles trapped by optical tweezers inside a colloidal gel (Laponite) during the sol-gel transition. We use several methods based on active and passive rheology to extract the effective temperature from the fluctuations of the Brownian particles. All of them give a temperature that, within experimental errors, is equal to the heat bath temperature. Several interesting features concerning the statistical properties and the long time correlations of the particles are observed during the transition.

Mots clés: Physical Sciences

Pierre Jop, Artyom Petrosyan, Sergio Ciliberto. Brownian Motion in a Colloidal Glass. Philosophical Magazine, 2008, 88 (33-35), pp.4205-4211. ⟨10.1080/14786430802459537⟩. ⟨hal-00513970⟩