UC Santa Barbara

In thermal “passive” microrheology, the random Brownian motion of anisotropically shaped probe particles embedded within an isotropic viscoelastic material can be used to extract the material’s frequency-dependent linear viscoelastic modulus. We unite the existing theoretical frameworks for separately treating translational and rotational probe motion in a viscoelastic material by extending the generalized Stokes–Einstein relation (GSER) into a tensorial form that reflects simultaneous equilibrium translational and rotational fluctuations of one or more anisotropic probe particles experiencing viscoelastic drag. The tensorial GSER provides a formal basis for interpreting the complex Brownian motion of anisotropic probes in a viscoelastic material. Based on known hydrodynamic calculations of the Stokes mobility of highly symmetric shapes in a simple viscous liquid, we show simple examples of the tensorial GSER for spheroids and half-stick, half-slip Janus spheres.