Eur. Phys. J. E (2011) 34: 115
https://doi.org/10.1140/epje/i2011-11115-7

Regular Article

Anisotropic elasticity in confocal studies of colloidal crystals

Laboratoire PCT, UMR Gulliver CNRS-ESPCI 7083, 10 rue Vauquelin, 75231, Paris Cedex 05, France

^* e-mail: michael.schindler@espci.fr

Received: 6 June 2011
Accepted: 12 September 2011
Published online: 26 October 2011

Abstract

We consider the theory of fluctuations of a colloidal solid observed in a confocal slice. For a cubic crystal we study the evolution of the projected elastic properties as a function of the anisotropy of the crystal using numerical methods based on the fast Fourier transform. In certain situations of high symmetry we find exact analytic results for the projected fluctuations.