Nonequilibrium depletion interactions in active microrheology

Abstract

Entropic depletion forces arise between mesoscopic bodies that are immersed in a suspension of macromolecules, such as colloid–polymer mixtures. Here we consider the case of a driven colloidal probe in the presence of another, passive colloidal particle, both solvated in an ideal bath of small spherical particles. We calculate the nonequilibrium forces mediated by the depletants on the two colloidal particles within a dynamical superposition approximation (DSA) scheme. In order to assess the quality of this approximation, and to obtain the colloidal microstructure around the driven probe, we corroborate our theoretical results with Brownian dynamics simulations.