Doctoral Dissertations

Date of Award

5-1998

Degree Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Major

Physics

Major Professor

Geoffrey Canright

Committee Members

Vasilios Alexiades, Hanno Weitering, John Quinn

Abstract

Recently, unusual and strikingly beautiful seahorse-like growth patterns have been discovered These patterns possess a spontaneously broken chiral (left/right) symmetry. To explain this spontaneous chiral symmetry breaking, we develop a model for the growth of the aggregate, assuming that the latter is charged, and that the incoming particles are polarizable, and hence drawn preferentially to regions of strong electric field. This model is used both for numerical simulation and theoretical analysis of the aggregation process. We find that the broken symmetry (typically, an ‘S’ shape) appears in our simulations for some parameter values. Its origin is the long-range interaction (competition and repulsion) among growing branches of the aggregate, such that a right or left side consistently dominates the growth process. We show that the electrostatic interaction may account for the other geometrical properties of the aggregates, such as the existence of only 2 main arms, and the “finned” external edge of the main arms. The results of our simulations of growth in the presence of the external electric field are also in a good agreement with the results of new experiments, motivated by our ideas. Thus, we believe that our growth model provides a plausible explanation of the origin of the broken symmetry in the experimental patterns.

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