Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 216, 21-29 (2013)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2013-01725-3

Regular Article

Brownian dynamics simulation of polydisperse hard spheres

¹ ISC-CNR Physics Dept., Univ. “La Sapienza”, Piazzale Moro 5, 00185 Roma, Italy
² IMT Alti Studi Lucca, piazza S. Ponziano 6, 55100 Lucca, Italy
³ London Institute of Mathematical Sciences, 22 South Audley St, Mayfair London W1K 2NY, UK

^a e-mail: antonio.scala@phys.uniroma1.it

Received: 30 November 2012
Revised: 6 December 2012
Published online: 31 January 2013

Abstract

Standard algorithms used for the numerical integration of the Langevin equation require that interactions should slowly vary during the integration time-step. This in not the case for hard-body systems, where there is no clear-cut between the correlation time of the noise and the time-scale of the interactions. Starting with a short time approximation of the Smoluchowski equation, we introduce an algorithm for the simulation of the over-damped Brownian dynamics of polydisperse hard-spheres in absence of hydrodynamic interactions and briefly discuss the extension to the case of external drifts.