Electro-optical effects in disperse systems in strong electric fields of arbitrary shape

• Formulae describing electro-optical effects in strong electric fields were derived.
• Different particle orientation mechanisms and field shapes are considered.
• Obtained formulae were verified experimentally for L. Monocytogenes suspension.
• Particle orientation mechanism for L. Monocytogenes was studied.
• The proposed technique allows to assess polydispersity of the solution.

Electro-optical techniques currently used to study disperse systems allow to determine different geometrical and electrical particle parameters in these systems. To reliably determine some of these parameters a long electric impulse or series of impulses has to be applied, which can alter some of the systems under study. To address this issue and allow to study disperse systems that cannot undergo lengthy application of electric field in our previous work we have proposed a technique to apply short pulses of electric field to the system under study which still allows determining particle parameters just like regular electro-optical techniques. In this article we further develop this technique by generalization of equations to the case of arbitrary field shape and particle orientation mechanism. The obtained experimental data for L. Monocytogenes verifies the developed equations for big particles.

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