  When a suspension consisting of dielectric particles having nonlinear
characteristics is subjected to a sinusoidal (ac) field, the electrical
response will in general consist of ac fields at frequencies of the
higher-order harmonics. These ac responses will also be anisotropic. In this
work, a self-consistent formalism has been employed to compute the induced
dipole moment for suspensions in which the suspended particles have nonlinear
characteristics, in an attempt to investigate the anisotropy in the ac
response. The results showed that the harmonics of the induced dipole moment
and the local electric field are both increased as the anisotropy increases for
the longitudinal field case, while the harmonics are decreased as the
anisotropy increases for the transverse field case. These results are
qualitatively understood with the spectral representation. Thus, by measuring
the ac responses both parallel and perpendicular to the uniaxial anisotropic
axis of the field-induced structures, it is possible to perform a real-time
monitoring of the field-induced aggregation process.
