title: Three-body interactions in colloidal systems.
abstract: We present a direct measurement of three-body interactions in a colloidal system comprised of three charged colloidal particles. Two of the particles have been confined by means of a scanned laser tweezers to a line-shaped optical trap where they diffused due to thermal fluctuations. Upon the approach of a third particle, attractive three-body interactions have been observed. The results are in qualitative agreement with additionally performed nonlinear Poisson-Boltzmann calculations, which also allow us to investigate the microionic density distributions in the neighborhood of the interacting colloidal particles.
authors.affiliation: Physics Department, University of Konstanz, 78457 Konstanz, Germany. jure.dobnikar@uni-konstanz.de
authors.forename: Jure
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Dobnikar
authors.forename: Matthias
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Brunner
authors.forename: Hans-Hennig
authors.initials: HH
authors.lastname: von Grünberg
authors.forename: Clemens
authors.initials: C
authors.lastname: Bechinger