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We numerically study a double-slit interferometer that detects the modification of local phase and amplitude signal due to a refractive index contrast in a nanoplasmonic sensor after the plasmonic wave has been coupled to the farfield. Specifically, the sensor consists of two elongated zero-mode waveguides (ZMW) which function to launch surface plasmons as well as transmit light directly into the farfield. The surface plasmon waves are coupled to the farfield by surface gratings which cover one quarter of a bull-eye antenna, with different transmission directions. In the farfield, the coupled plasmon waves interfere with the directly transmitted reference wave, which reveals a combination of the phase and amplitude modification by the asymmetry of refractive index in the lumen of the ZMW. We report a drastic increase in sensitivity over interferometers that only utilize the directly transmitted fraction., Comment: 18 pages, 12 figures

Flow-stabilized solids are a class of fragile matter that forms when a dense suspension of colloids accumulates against a semi-permeable barrier, for flow rates above a critical value. In order to probe the effect of particle size on the formation of these solids, we perform experiments on micron-sized monodisperse spherical polystyrene spheres in a Hele-Shaw geometry. We examine the spatial extent, internal fluctuations, and fluid permeability of the solids deposited against the barrier, and find that these do not scale with the P\'eclet number. Instead, we find distinct behaviors at higher Peclet numbers, suggesting a transition from thermal- to athermal-solids which we connect to particle-scale fluctuations in the liquid-like layer at the upstream surface of the solid. We further observe that while the Carman-Kozeny model does not accurately predict the permeability of flow-stabilized solids, we do find a new scaling which predicts the permeability.

Understanding the particle-scale transition from elastic deformation to plastic flow is central to making predictions about the bulk material properties and response of disordered materials. To address this issue, we perform experiments on flow-stabilized solids composed of micron-scale spheres within a microfluidic channel, in a regime where particle inertia is negligible. Each solid heap exists within a stress gradient imposed by the flow, and we track the positions of particles in response to single impulses of fluid-driven compression or decompression. We find that the resulting deformation field is well-decomposed into an affine field, with a constant strain profile throughout the solid, and a non-affine field. The magnitude of this non-affine response decays with the distance from the free surface in the long-time limit, suggesting that the distance from jamming plays a significant role in controlling the length scale of plastic flow. Finally, we observe that compressive pulses create more rearrangements than decompressive pulses, an effect that we quantify using the $D^2_\mathrm{min}$ statistic for non-affine motion. Unexpectedly, the time scale for the compression response is shorter than for decompression at the same strain (but unequal pressure), providing insight into the coupling between deformation and cage-breaking.

Thermal fluctuations, geometric exclusion, and external driving all govern the mechanical response of dense particulate suspensions. Here, we measure the stress-strain response of quasi-two-dimensional flow-stabilized microsphere heaps in a regime in which all three effects are present using a microfluidic device. We observe that the elastic modulus and the mean interparticle separation of the heaps are tunable via the confining stress provided by the fluid flow. Furthermore, the measured stress-strain curves exhibit a universal nonlinear shape which can be predicted from a thermal van der Waals equation of state with excluded volume. This analysis indicates that many-body interactions contribute a significant fraction of the stress supported by the heap.

We observe the formation of heaps of repulsive microspheres, created by flowing a colloidal microsphere suspension towards a flat-topped ridge placed within a quasi two-dimensional microfluidic channel. This configuration allows for both shear and normal forces on the microspheres in contact with the ridge. The heaps, which form against the ridge, are characterized by two distinct phases: a solid-like bulk phase in the interior, and a highly-fluctuating, liquid-like state which exists along its leading edge. We observe that heaps only form above a critical flow velocity, (v_c), and that they are destroyed by thermal rearrangements when the flow ceases. We monitor the dynamics of heap formation using fluorescence video microscopy, measuring the heap volume and the angle of repose in response to microsphere deposition and erosion processes. We find that the steady-state angle of repose, (\theta_f), increases as a function of inflow velocity, (v_\infty), with a functional form (\theta_f \propto \sqrt{v_\infty - v_c}).

We consider the diffusive motion of a localized knot along a linear polymer chain. In particular, we derive the mean diffusion time of the knot before it escapes from the chain once it gets close to one of the chain ends. Self-reptation of the entire chain between either end and the knot position, during which the knot is provided with free volume, leads to an L^3 scaling of diffusion time; for sufficiently long chains, subdiffusion will enhance this time even more. Conversely, we propose local ``breathing'', i.e., local conformational rearrangement inside the knot region (KR) and its immediate neighbourhood, as additional mechanism. The contribution of KR-breathing to the diffusion time scales only quadratically, L^2, speeding up the knot escape considerably and guaranteeing finite knot mobility even for very long chains., Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures. Accepted to Europhys. Lett