Periodic and quasiperiodic motions of many particles falling in a viscous fluid.

The dynamics of regular clusters of many nontouching particles falling under gravity in a viscous fluid at low Reynolds number are analyzed within the point-particle model. The evolution of two families of particle configurations is determined: two or four regular horizontal polygons (called "rings") centered above or below each other. Two rings fall together and periodically oscillate. Four rings usually separate from each other with chaotic scattering. For hundreds of thousands of initial configurations, a map of the cluster lifetime is evaluated in which the long-lasting clusters are centered around periodic solutions for the relative motions, and they are surrounded by regions of chaotic scattering in a similar way to what was observed by Janosi et al. [Phys. Rev. E. 56, 2858 (1997)] for three particles only. These findings suggest that we should consider the existence of periodic orbits as a possible physical mechanism of the existence of unstable clusters of particles falling under gravity in a viscous fluid.