Category: soft matter

Leidenfrost effect in my kitchen

Jerel Walker of the fame of Halliday, Resnick ,Walker textbook fame has a superb article on this: https://www.reed.edu/physics/332/pdf/Leidenfrost.pdf

Wikipedia has a reasonable explanation: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leidenfrost_effect#:~:text=The%20Leidenfrost%20effect%20is%20a,the%20liquid%20from%20boiling%20rapidly.

Ocean, Okinawa and OIST…

I had a memorable visit to Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology – OIST (27th and 28th April 2023). Prof. Mahesh Bandi was my host, I had a fabulous time interacting with him and a few other groups. Below are some (of many) highlights.

First, the geography : located in the midst of the ocean(s), away from the mainland Japan, Okinawa is the southern most part of Japan. I took a 2.5 hrs. flight from Tokyo and reached the destination when it was dark.

In the morning, I woke up and opened the window to be pleasantly surprised to see the beautiful ocean in my field of view. Below is a photo I took from the balcony of the room.

At the outset, I had a fabulous discussion. Mahesh and I had a excellent free-wheeling discussion on various topics including science, arts and history. Also, I visited his lab to see very creative experiments on non-equilibrium physics including some fascinating experimental designs to probe dynamics at liquid-air interface. He has a fabulous set of students working on interesting problems. It was both refreshing and stimulating.

with Mahesh Bandi

In the afternoon, I gave my seminar and below is an interesting announcement (because it spells out my full name :-)). I discussed about some non-equilibrium aspects of our work, and towards the end emphasized some interesting prospects of statistical optics in an optothermal-assembly.

After my talk, I had illuminating discussion with Prof. Pinaki Chakraborty on thermal diffusion, fluid dynamics and history of science. I enjoyed visiting his lab, in which they have built one of the biggest Taylor-Couette flow set up I have ever seen (see the frame behind Pinaki in the picture below).

with Pinaki

Next day, I had an elaborate lab tour of Prof. Sile Nic Chormaic, who is an expert in various topics related to optics/photonics including optical trapping. As she was travelling, her post-doc Dr. Souvik Sil, hosted me and took me around to show various aspects of their lab. It was a great learning experience.

with Souvik

On the same day, I visited the cutting-edge lab of Prof. Keshav Dani. Since he was travelling, his team members gave me a brief tour and I was amazed by some of their experiments.

Another major highlight of my trip was to meet many IISER students. Specifically, I met Amit Bhunia (post-doc) and Saurav Raj (PhD student) who are IISER Pune alumnus. I also met many IISER Kolkata students (Souvik being one of them).

Overall, I was mighty impressed by the research infrastructure at OIST and the people working there. It is quite remarkable how they have been able to build such a great facility in such a short time (their campus started around 2010).

a corridor in OIST

Today, I have reached Osaka, and on Monday will be giving a talk and visiting a few groups at Osaka Unviersity. Prof. Hajime Ishihara is my host, and I look forward to plenty of interaction on optical manipulation.

Two talks in Tokyo

Wonderful Japanese-Gothic architecture at The University of Tokyo

I gave two talks in Tokyo.

First was on 24th April at Department of Applied Physics, Faculty of Advanced Engineering, Tokyo University of Science. My host was Prof. Yutaka Sumino. I spoke about “Soft Matter in Opto-Thermal Gradients“. I gave a short introduction to opto-thermal perturbations and potentials, and discussed some of our work on opto-thermophoretic trapping and Brownian dynamics. The audience contained a few master students too, and I really enjoyed discussing some concepts related to Brownian motion in an optothermal trap, and related experiments. Also, I had a very interesting discussion with Sumino and his students on their experiments on Janus particles.

with Yutaka
with Yutaka”s group

The second talk was on 25th April at Department of Physics, University of Tokyo. My host was Prof. Kazumasa Takeuchi. I spoke about “Soft Matter in Opto-Thermal Gradients : Evolutionary Dynamics and Pattern Formation“.

This talk was also announced on Japan’s statphys mailing list, and also live-casted over zoom. I discussed about the origins of optothermal effects in a laser trap, and how it can lead to some interesting dynamics and pattern formation in soft-matter system. Specifically, I highlighted the concept of Hot Brownian motion, and how it can be influenced using thermo-plasmons. The talk and discussion went on for almost 2 hours, and I really loved it. Also, Takeuchi and his students gave an overview of their work including a live demonstration on turbulence in liquid crystals, and it was fantastic.

with Takeuchi
with Takeuchi’s group

OMC 2023

We had a great discussion after the talk… spoke on how temperature gradients can be harnessed for optical manipulation in colloidal fluids… which further leads to some interesting Brownian dynamics

The 10th Optical Manipulation and Structured Materials Conference (OMC2023) was superb….learnt a lot.
This was part of Optics & Photonics International Congress 2023

Thanks to Prof. Takashige Omatsu for the invitation and amazing Japanese hospitality…

Geo-fractal…somewhere over south India

I am always amazed to see fractal-like patterns….this one at a geographical scale…captured somewhere over south India..

I took the photo on my trip back to Pune from IIT Madras…

Thanks to IIT-M physics department for their invitation for colloquium…

Special thanks to Basudev Roy and Nirmala for hosting…. greatly enjoyed the discussion with many faculties and students..

In my talk, I mainly spoke on topics at the interface of statistical optics, Brownian motion and pattern formation..
Was delighted to see (and meet) Profs. Balki, Suresh Govindarajan Sunil Kumar Arnab Pal and many more in the audience.

The photo, retrospectively, captures the essence of the science discussed…

Soft Matter Optics – talk at ACS -India

About 2 years ago (22nd May 2020), when all the academic activities were online, I gave a talk on “Soft-Matter Optics: A Cabinet of Curiosities” organized by American Chemical Society as part of India Science Talks. Below is the embedded video of the online talk.

Link to ACS website can be found here.

In there, I give a broad overview of how interesting optical function can emerge from the complex world of soft matter. In addition to this, I have emphasized how optics can be harnessed to study structure and dynamics of soft-matter systems including colloids, liquid crystal and some biological matter. The target audience are new PhD students and anyone who is entering the field of light-soft matter interaction.

Review article – Plasmonic colloids + Optical Vortex

Appended is a link to arxiv preprint of an invited review article that I wrote as part of a special issue on nanophotonics in the Indian Journal of Physics and Applied Physics. The issue is edited by Dr. Achanta Venugopal (TIFR/NPL).

In this review, I discuss about assembly and dynamics of plasmonic colloids under the influence of optical vortex fields.

The abstract reads :
Structured light has emerged as an important tool to interrogate and manipulate matter at micron and sub-micron scale. One form of structured light is an optical vortex beam. The helical wavefront of these vortices carry orbital angular momentum which can be transferred to a Brownian colloid. When the colloid is made of metallic nanostructures, such as silver and gold, resonant optical effects play a vital role, and the interaction leads to complex dynamics and assembly. This brief review aims to discuss some recent work on trapping plasmonic colloids with optical vortices and their lattices. The role of optical scattering and absorption has important implications on the underlying forces and torques, which is specifically enunciated. The effect of spin and orbital angular momentum in an optical vortex can lead to spin-orbit coupling dynamics, and these effects are highlighted with examples from the literature. In addition to assembly and dynamics, enhanced Brownian motion of plasmonic colloids under the influence of a vortex-lattice is discussed. The pedagogical aspects to understand the interaction between optical vortex and plasmonic colloids is emphasized.

I welcome comments on the review.

arxiv : https://arxiv.org/abs/2211.03547

New paper :”Optothermal evolution of active colloidal matter in defocused laser trap”

We have a new paper to be published in ACS Photonics on “Optothermal evolution of active colloidal matter in defocused laser trap”

In the context of non-equilibrium statistical mechanics, it is relevant to ask : how does a system of (active) Brownian particles respond to environmental cues ?

Structured light in the form of an optical trap can facilitate a platform to create unconventional, environmental cues in which Brownian particles can dynamically assemble and evolve as a function of space and time.

In this work, we utilize a simple defocused laser trap and study the evolutionary dynamics of thermally active colloids (polystyrene spheres infused with iron oxide). We observe a variety of (nonlinear) dynamical states including hovering of a pair, a kind of synchrony among the assembled colloids in the trap (see video).

Thanks to the great efforts of Dipta and Rahul from my group, we have been able to study and unveil the complex forces at play. The dual contribution of optical potential of the laser and thermophoretic interaction of colloids were revealed by systematic experiments and numerical simulations leading to this elaborate report.

This study further motivates interesting questions in the context of microscopic heat engines where the light and heat created in an optical trap can lead to some interesting nonlinear dynamics of soft matter systems. Another prospect is to characterize structured optothermal fields using Brownian motors as microscopic probes in an optical trap. More on this in the coming month….

all videos related to the work on our lab youtube channel

preprint version of the paper on arxiv : https://arxiv.org/abs/2203.08904

I will post the published version of the article when available