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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 34: Statistical Physics: Far From Equilibrium II

DY 34.1: Talk

Wednesday, March 29, 2023, 16:45–17:00, ZEU 250

Lane formation of colloidal particles driven by gravity — •Marc Isele, Kay Hofmann, and Peter Nielaba — Physics Department, University of Konstanz, Konstanz, Germany

Systems of particles that move with differing relative speeds as a counterpart to the movements of pedestrians and crowds have been shown to form a so-called lane structure. We simulate a quasi two dimensional system of two spherical particle types of different sizes driven by gravity. The particles are confined by hard walls orthogonal to the driving force and we employed Brownian Dynamics simulations (without hydrodynamic interactions). We found that the particles formed the well-known lane structure rather quickly. In this formation process the particles form slanted boundaries between the soon to be lanes which leads to regions of high and low densities. In the steady state we further found that the lanes closest to the hard walls were always occupied by the smaller particles (via something we call a funneling process). We also analyzed a wide variety of parameters giving us an optimized system for lane formation. Our work shows that the lane formation of driven particles is a phenomenon with a lot of different aspects that can depend heavily on the chosen system.