Colloidal trajectories in two-dimensional light-induced quasicrystals with 14-fold symmetry due to phasonic drifts

Abstract

Quasicrystals are structures that are not periodic but possess a long range positional order. They can have any rotational symmetry including those that are forbidden in periodic crystals. The symmetry is classified by the point group and the rank D. In quasicrystals, phasons as additional hydrodynamic modes cause correlated rearrangements of the particles. The number of phasonic degrees of freedom depends on the rank. For colloidal quasicrystals that are induced by laser fields, specific phasonic displacements can be realized by changing the phases of the laser beams in a well-determined way. The arising trajectories of colloids in two-dimensional light-induced colloidal quasicrystals with rank D = 4 have already been analyzed in detail. Here, we analyze the colloidal trajectories in two-dimensional quasicrystals with 14-fold symmetry having rank D = 6. We observe complex paths of the colloids consisting of straight and winding lines as well as jumps.