Gravity-controlled non-equilibrium Casimir pressure in a binary liquid mixture

Abstract

We investigate the non-equilibrium Casimir pressure in an isothermal binary liquid mixture maintained in a spatially constant and stationary concentration gradient parallel to gravity and confined within a three-dimensional slab of thickness $L$, bounded by two infinite plates parallel to both the gravitational field and the imposed gradient. We assume that the liquid mixture, under the same non-equilibrium conditions, occupies both the interior and the exterior of the slab. Using fluctuating hydrodynamics, we show that the resulting finite-size excess pressure on the plates is described by a scaling function of the dimensionless variable $k_{\mathrm{RO}}L$, where $k_{\mathrm{RO}}$ is the gravity-induced roll-off wavevector. At large separations, this Casimir pressure decays as $1/(k_{\mathrm{RO}}L)$. Depending on the thermodynamic properties of the mixture, the corresponding force can be either attractive or repulsive, while it vanishes for ideal solutions. Since the mixture is assumed to be far from its consolute critical point, the Casimir pressure investigated here is entirely of non-equilibrium origin and it vanishes in the absence of the imposed concentration gradient. Finally, we propose an experimental setup where this force might be measured, consisting of two optically trapped colloidal particles immersed in a dense aqueous colloidal suspension diffusing into an overlying layer of pure water, estimating the expected magnitude of the resulting force.