title: Critical Casimir interactions between spherical particles in the presence of bulk ordering fields.
abstract: The spatial suppression of order parameter fluctuations in a critical media produces critical Casimir forces acting on confining surfaces. This scenario is realized in a critical binary mixture near the demixing transition point that corresponds to the second-order phase transition of the Ising universality class. Due to these critical interactions similar colloids, immersed in a critical binary mixture near the consolute point, exhibit attraction. The numerical method for computation of the interaction potential between two spherical particles using Monte Carlo simulations for the Ising model is proposed. This method is based on the integration of the local magnetization over the applied local magnetic field. For the stronger interaction the concentration of the component of the mixture that does not wet colloidal particles should be larger than the critical concentration. The strongest amplitude of the interactions is observed below the critical point.
authors.affiliation: Max-Planck-Institut für Intelligente Systeme, Heisenbergstraße 3, D-70569 Stuttgart, Germany and IV. Institut für Theoretische Physik, Universität Stuttgart, Pfaffenwaldring 57, D-70569 Stuttgart, Germany.
authors.forename: O A
authors.initials: OA
authors.lastname: Vasilyev
mesh_terms: D003102:Colloids; D060328:Magnetic Phenomena; D009010:Monte Carlo Method
chemical_list: D003102:Colloids