Thursday, 23 March, 2006
Microrheology Probes Length Scale Dependent Rheology
J. Liu, M. L. Gardel, K. Kroy, E. Frey, B. D. Hoffman, J. C. Crocker, A. R. Bausch, and D. A. Weitz -
Phys. Rev. Lett. 96, 118104 (2006)
We exploit the power of microrheology to measure the viscoelasticity of entangled F-actin solutions at different length scales from 1 to 100 µm over a wide frequency range. We compare the behavior of single probe-particle motion to that of the correlated motion of two particles. By varying the average length of the filaments, we identify fluctuations that dissipate diffusively over the filament length. These provide an important relaxation mechanism of the elasticity between 0.1 and 30 rad/sec.