Non-equilibrium work distribution for interacting colloidal particles under friction

Abstract

We experimentally investigate the distribution of the non-equilibrium work done by an external force on a mesoscopic system with many coupled degrees of freedom: a colloidal monolayer mechanically driven across a periodic light field. Since this system mimics the spatiotemporal dynamics of a crystalline surface moving on a corrugated substrate, our results show general properties of the non-equilibrium work distribution of atomically flat surfaces undergoing friction. We address the role of several parameters which can influence the shape of the work distribution, e.g. the number of particles used to locally probe the system and the time interval to measure the work. We find that, when tuning the control parameters to induce particle depinning from the substrate, there is an abrupt change of the shape of the work distribution. While in the completely static and sliding friction regimes the work distribution is Gaussian, non-Gaussian tails show up due to the spatiotemporal heterogeneity of the particle dynamics during the transition between these two regimes.

Submitted to New J. Phys

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