Abstract
We study the stochastic dynamics of an electrolyte driven by a uniform external electric field and show that it exhibits generic scale invariance despite the presence of Debye screening. The resulting long-range correlations give rise to a Casimir-like fluctuation-induced force between neutral boundaries that confine the ions; this force is controlled by the external electric field, and it can be both attractive and repulsive with similar boundary conditions, unlike other long-range fluctuation-induced forces. This work highlights the importance of nonequilibrium correlations in electrolytes and shows how they can be used to tune interactions between uncharged biological or synthetic structures at large separations.
Highlights
Fluctuation-induced forces (FIFs) can arise in a wide range of systems where external objects modify the spectrum of the fluctuations in a correlated medium [1,2]
We study the stochastic dynamics of an electrolyte driven by a uniform external electric field and show that it exhibits generic scale invariance despite the presence of Debye screening
Such forces only act at short distances when the confined fluctuations have a finite correlation length, for instance the Debye screening length in electrolytes [3,4]; scale-free correlations, on the other hand, can give rise to long-ranged FIFs with universal properties [5], e.g., in the case of Casimir attraction between metallic plates in vacuum [6] and forces arising from critical fluctuations in thermal equilibrium [7,8]
Summary
Fluctuation-induced forces (FIFs) can arise in a wide range of systems where external objects modify the spectrum of the fluctuations in a correlated medium [1,2]. We study the stochastic dynamics of an electrolyte driven by a uniform external electric field and show that it exhibits generic scale invariance despite the presence of Debye screening.
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