A new mechanism for dendritic pattern formation in dense systems

Patterns are often formed when particles cluster: Since patterns reflect the connectivity of different types of material, the emergence of patterns affects the physical and chemical properties of systems and shares a close relationship to their macroscopic functions. A radial dendritic pattern (RDP) is observed in many systems such as snow crystals, polymer crystals and biological systems. Although most of these systems are considered as dense particle suspensions, the mechanism of RDP formation in dense particle systems is not yet understood. It should be noted that the diffusion limited aggregation model is not applicable to RDP formation in dense systems, but in dilute particle systems. Here, we propose a simple model that exhibits RDP formation in a dense particle system. The model potential for the inter-particle interaction is composed of two parts, a repulsive and an attractive force. The repulsive force is applied to all the particles all the time and the attractive force is exerted only among particles inside a circular domain, which expands at a certain speed as a wave front propagating from a preselected centre. It is found that an RDP is formed if the velocity of the wave front that triggers the attractive interaction is of the same order of magnitude as the time scale defined by the aggregation speed.