title: Three-body fluctuation-induced interaction at fluid interfaces: a strong deviation from the pairwise summation.
abstract: We present a new method based on the scattering technique to investigate fluctuation-induced forces at a fluid interface. The scattering approach, well suited to the study of many-body systems of arbitrary geometries, is augmented to include boundary fluctuations. Using this method, we study the deviation of the total fluctuation-induced interaction from the sum of pairwise energies for three colloidal particles. We consider both frozen and fluctuating colloids and obtain a very good agreement between analytical and numerical results. We find a marked difference in the three-body fluctuation-induced free energy between the frozen and fluctuating colloids, both in sign and relative size.
authors.affiliation: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of California, Riverside, California 92521, USA.
authors.forename: Ehsan
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Noruzifar
authors.forename: Jef
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Wagner
authors.forename: Roya
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Zandi
mesh_terms: D003102:Colloids / Q000737:chemistry*; D003198:Computer Simulation; D008956:Models, Chemical; D012212:Rheology / Q000379:methods*; D013499:Surface Properties
chemical_list: D003102:Colloids