Research·06 / 06
Soft matter and multiple light scattering
My early work, starting with my PhD in Grenoble, dealt with the transport of light in disordered media and with the physics of complex fluids such as ferrofluids, colloids and liquid crystals.
Colloids · Liquid crystals · Magneto-optics
Light in disordered and magneto-optical media
When light is scattered many times, it diffuses. In magneto-optical media, a magnetic field deflects this diffuse light sideways, an effect known as the photonic Hall effect. We developed the theory of magneto-transverse light diffusion and of coherent backscattering in a magnetic field, compared it with experiments on ferrofluids, and studied the patterns formed by backscattered polarized light.
Colloids and liquid crystals
We studied phase transitions in ferrofluids under a magnetic field, the use of chains of magnetic colloids to measure colloidal forces and thermal expansion, and the optical properties and phase transitions of liquid crystals and nematic gels.
Publications 16
All publicationsMagnetic colloids
- 2009
Thermal expansion within a chain of magnetic colloidal particles
D. Lacoste, C. Brangbour, J. Bibette, J. Baudry · Phys. Rev. E 80, 011401
- 2009
Measuring colloidal forces with the magnetic chaining technique
R. Dreyfus, D. Lacoste, J. Bibette, J. Baudry · Eur. Phys. J. E 28, 113
- 2003
Field-induced structures in miscible ferrofluid suspensions with and without latex spheres
M. Islam, K. Lin, D. Lacoste, T. Lubensky, A. Yodh · Phys. Rev. E 67, 021402
- 2001
Phase transitions in a ferrofluid at magnetic field induced microphase separation
D. Lacoste, T. Lubensky · Phys. Rev. E 64, 041506
Liquid crystals
- 2002
Phase transitions in lyotropic nematic gels
D. Lacoste, A. Lau, T. Lubensky · Eur. Phys. J. E 8, 403
- 2002
Effective index of refraction, optical rotation, and circular dichroism in isotropic liquid crystals
D. Lacoste, P. Collings, T. Lubensky · Phys. Rev. E 65, 031717
Patterns with diffuse polarized light
- 2004
Geometric depolarization in patterns formed by backscattered light
D. Lacoste, V. Rossetto, F. Jaillon, H. Saint-Jalmes · Optics Letters 29, 2040
- 2004
Depolarization of backscattered linearly polarized light
L.-F. Rojas-Ochoa, D. Lacoste, R. Lenke, P. Schurtenberger, F. Scheffold · J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 21, 1799
Magneto-optics with diffuse light
- 2000
Coherent backscattering of light in a magnetic field
D. Lacoste, B. van Tiggelen · Phys. Rev. E 61, 4556
- 2000
Transport mean free path for magneto-transverse light diffusion: an alternative approach
D. Lacoste · Waves Random Media 10, 367
- 2000
- 2000
Photonic Hall effect in ferrofluids: theory and experiments
D. Lacoste, F. Donatini, S. Neveu, S. Serughetti, B. van Tiggelen · Phys. Rev. E 62, 3934
- 2000
The photonic Hall effect in absorbing media
S. Wiebel, A. Sparenberg, G. Rikken, D. Lacoste, B. van Tiggelen · Phys. Rev. E 62, 8636
- 1999
Transport mean free path for magneto-transverse light diffusion
D. Lacoste, B. van Tiggelen · Europhys. Lett. 45, 721
- 1999
PhD thesis: light scattering in magneto-optical or chiral media (in French)
D. Lacoste · Université Joseph Fourier, Grenoble
- 1998
Optics of a Faraday Mie sphere
D. Lacoste, B. van Tiggelen, G. Rikken, A. Sparenberg · J. Opt. Soc. Am. A 15, 1632