Recent theoretical advances show that the temperature of a system in equilibrium can be measured from static snapshots of its constituents’ instantaneous configurations, without regard to their dynamics. We report the first measurements of the configurational temperature in an experimental system. In particular, we introduce a hierarchy of hyperconfigurational temperature definitions, which we use to analyze monolayers of charge-stabilized colloidal spheres. Equality of the hyperconfigurational and bulk thermodynamic temperatures provides previously lacking thermodynamic self-consistency checks for the measured colloidal pair potentials, and thereby casts new light on anomalous like-charge colloidal attractions induced by geometric confinement.

• Received 16 December 2003

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.92.148301