Research Project: In this project, an international team of experts in theory, simulation and experiments with colloidal soft matter will design, implement, execute, analyze and interpret accurate optical measurements of non-equilibrium Casimir-like forces arising between large colloidal particles immersed in a complex medium exhibiting giant concentration fluctuations due to Fick diffusion. The project aims at characterizing the inter-particle potential by directly monitoring particles at the microscopic scale, providing thus the first experimental evidence and measurement of the non-equilibrium Casimir-like forces, which remained so-far elusive to experiments.

Research Team: Agnese Callegari (U of Gothenburg), Roberto Cerbino (U of Vienna), Norma Caridad Palmero Cruz (U of Guanajuato), Giuseppe Pesce (U of Gothenburg), Giovanni Volpe (U of Gothenburg)