Brownian dynamics of elongated particles in a quasi-2D isotropic liquid

Abstract

We demonstrate experimentally that the long-range hydrodynamic interactions in an incompressible quasi 2D isotropic fluid result in an anisotropic viscous drag acting on elongated particles. The anisotropy of the drag is increasing with increasing ratio of the particle length to the hydrodynamic scale given by the Saffman-Delbrück length. The micro-rheology data for translational and rotational drags collected over three orders of magnitude of the effective particle length demonstrate the validity of the current theoretical approaches to the hydrodynamics in restricted geometry. The results also demonstrate crossovers between the hydrodynamical regimes determined by the characteristic length scales.