Laser-induced condensation in colloid—polymer mixtures

Abstract

We study a mixture of hard sphere colloidal particles and non-adsorbing polymers exposed to a plane wave external potential which represents a three-dimensional standing laser field. With computer simulations and density functional theory we investigate the structure and phase behaviour using the simple Asakura-Oosawa model. For varying laser wavelength λ we monitor the emergence of structure in response to the external field, as measured by the amplitude of the oscillations in the one-body density distribution. Between the ideal gas limit for small λ and the bulk limit of large λ there is a non-monotonic crossover that is governed by commensurability of λ and the colloid diameter. The theoretical curves are in good agreement with simulation results. Furthermore, the effect of the periodic field on the liquid-vapour transition is studied, a situation that we refer to as laser-induced condensation. Above a threshold value for λ the theoretical phase diagram indicates the stability of a ‘stacked’ fluid phase, which is a periodic succession (in the beam direction) of liquid and vapour slabs. This partially condensed phase causes a splitting of the liquid-vapour binodal leading to two critical and a triple point. All our predictions should be experimentally observable for colloid-polymer mixtures in an optical resonator.