Resonant behavior of trapped Brownian particles in an oscillatory shear flow.

The response of harmonically trapped Brownian particles to an externally imposed oscillatory shear flow is explored by theory and computer simulation. The special case of a single trapped particle is solved analytically. We present explicit results for the time-dependent density and the velocity distribution. The response of the many-body problem is studied by computer simulations. In particular, we investigate the influence of oscillatory shear flow on the internal modes of the cluster. As a function of the shear oscillation frequency, we find resonant behavior for certain (antisymmetric) normal modes, implying that they can be efficiently excited by oscillatory shear. Our results are verifiable in experiments on dusty plasmas and trapped colloidal dispersions.