Effective forces between colloids at interfaces induced by capillary wave-like fluctuations
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We calculate the effective force mediated by thermally excited capillary waves between spherical or disklike colloids trapped at a fluid interface. This Casimir type interaction is shown to depend sensitively on the boundary conditions imposed at the three-phase contact line. For large distances between the colloids an unexpected cancellation of attractive and repulsive contributions is observed leading to a fluctuation force which decays algebraically very rapidly. For small separations the resulting force is rather strong and it may play an important role in two-dimensional colloid aggregation if direct van der Waals forces are weak.
7 pages, 3 figures, minor revisions, one additional figure
7 pages, 3 figures, minor revisions, one additional figure