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Title: Physical limits to sensing material properties
Abstract All materials respond heterogeneously at small scales, which limits what a sensor can learn. Although previous studies have characterized measurement noise arising from thermal fluctuations, the limits imposed by structural heterogeneity have remained unclear. In this paper, we find that the least fractional uncertainty with which a sensor can determine a material constant λ 0 of an elastic medium is approximately $$\delta {\lambda }_{0}/{\lambda }_{0} \sim ({\Delta }_{\lambda }^{1/2}/{\lambda }_{0}){(d/a)}^{D/2}{(\xi /a)}^{D/2}$$ δ λ 0 / λ 0 ~ ( Δ λ 1 / 2 / λ 0 ) ( d / a ) D / 2 ( ξ / a ) D / 2 for a  ≫  d  ≫  ξ , $${\lambda }_{0}\gg {\Delta }_{\lambda }^{1/2}$$ λ 0 ≫ Δ λ 1 / 2 , and D  > 1, where a is the size of the sensor, d is its spatial resolution, ξ is the correlation length of fluctuations in λ 0 , Δ λ is the local variability of λ 0 , and D is the dimension of the medium. Our results reveal how one can construct devices capable of sensing near these limits, e.g. for medical diagnostics. We use our theoretical framework to estimate the limits of mechanosensing in a biopolymer network, a sensory process involved in cellular behavior, medical diagnostics, and material fabrication.  more » « less
Award ID(s):
1741618
PAR ID:
10288951
Author(s) / Creator(s):
; ; ;
Date Published:
Journal Name:
Nature Communications
Volume:
11
Issue:
1
ISSN:
2041-1723
Format(s):
Medium: X
Sponsoring Org:
National Science Foundation
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