Ballistic Deposition at Glancing Angles

This is an older project for which there is no published work, but the pictures are quite cool! Shown are snapshots of the evolution of a growing surface when particles are ballistically incident at angles of +7.125 or -7.125 degrees (arctan(1/8)) from the horizontal and stick irreversibly to the deposit upon first contact. Somewhat paradoxically, glancing angle incidence leads to a coarsening array of nearly vertical fingers. The surface is shown after 2 million, 10 million, and 50 million particles have been deposited. The number of particles displayed is 100,000 for these three cases, with different colors for each 20% of the deposit.


Snapshot after 2 million particles. Snapshot after 10 million particles. Snapshot after 50 million particles.>
Sidney Redner <redner@bu.edu>
Last modified: Sun Mar 25 20:29:38 EST 2001