Dynamic Simulation of a Population of Quincke Particles

Understanding the universal principles hidden behind the diverse collective behaviors exhibited in various active systems is of great interest to the active matter community. The active particles driven by Quincke rotation, which is the spontaneous rotation of dielectric particles immersed in a weakly-conducting liquid under the application of a DC electric field, serves as an ideal synthetic system for studying collective motions of active materials. Quincke particles have been reported to show rich emergent patterns at different conditions such as swarms, clusters, vortexes, bands, amorphous solids and so on. We report here on the development of a particle-based simulation of a population of Quincke particles. The simulation method modifies the Stokesian Dynamics method with the additional Quincke rotation mechanism. With all essential microscopic interactions like electrostatic and hydrodynamic interactions systematically considered, we are possibly to elucidate the physical principles governs the formation of emergent diverse collective behaviors of Quincke particles with large-scale simulations.