Anisotropic elasticity in confocal studies of colloidal crystals.

We consider the theory of fluctuations of a colloidal solid observed in a confocal slice. For a cubic crystal we study the evolution of the projected elastic properties as a function of the anisotropy of the crystal using numerical methods based on the fast Fourier transform. In certain situations of high symmetry we find exact analytic results for the projected fluctuations. © EDP Sciences / Società Italiana di Fisica / Springer-Verlag 2011