Condensed Matter Physics Seminar: Movement of a needle in a field of scatterers

Abstract:

The diffusion of a needle in a 2D random field of scatterers is a toy model system which was studied extensively in relation to diffusion of liquid crystals in dense suspensions, as well as in relation to the diffusion of elongated proteins in lipid bilayers. This relatively simple model exhibits some very interesting and sometimes unintuitive behavior. We provide the first experimental realization of the model to follow the single needle dynamics. We measured the movement of silver nanowires in a field of randomly distributed optically generated soft scatterers and lithography created hard scatterers at different densities. We also propose a new approach of analyzing the problem.

Seminar Organizer: Dr. Eran Sela