Diffusiophoresis driven colloidal manipulation and shortcuts to adiabaticity

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel method combining optical trapping and diffusiophoretic forces to rapidly manipulate colloidal states, avoiding the need for transiently expulsive traps and enabling shortcuts to adiabaticity.

Contribution

It proposes a new protocol using time-dependent diffusiophoretic forces to achieve fast colloidal decompression without transiently expulsive traps.

Findings

Successful implementation of rapid colloidal decompression with confining traps.

Demonstration of control over colloidal dynamics via salt concentration manipulation.

Establishment of a shortcut to adiabaticity protocol for colloidal systems.

Abstract

While compressing a colloidal state by optical means alone has been previously achieved through a specific time-dependence of the trap stiffness, realizing quickly the reverse transformation stumbles upon the necessity of a transiently expulsive trap. To circumvent this difficulty, we propose to drive the colloids by a combination of optical trapping and diffusiophoretic forces, both time-dependent. Forcing via diffusiophoresis is enforced by controlling the salt concentration at the boundary of the domain where the colloids are confined. The method takes advantage of the separation of time scales between salt and colloidal dynamics, and realizes a fast decompression in an optical trap that remains confining at all times. We thereby obtain a so-called shortcut to adiabaticity protocol where colloidal dynamics, enslaved to salt dynamics, can nevertheless be controlled as desired.