Viscoelastic properties of confined molecular layers

We study the viscoelastic properties of a film of n layers of spherical molecules confined between two walls. We find that the dynamic response arises from two competing contributions: the effective stiffness of n + 1 springs in series and softening due to strain fluctuations. In particular, the latter are the origin of the oscillatory behavior of the stiffness and the damping coefficient. The dissipation is strongest at the minima of the stiffness; the inverse behavior may occur for a modulated relaxation time. As a corollary we show that confined molecular layers cannot be described as Maxwell fluids.