Annealing two-dimensional diffusion-limited aggregates

We have studied the structure of annealed two-dimensional diffusion-limited aggregates (DLA). The annealing process consists of introducing internal flexibility to the original DLA rigid structure as well as excluded volume interactions between particles. From extensive Monte Carlo simulations we obtained aggregates with fractal dimension slightly higher than that obtained for two-dimensional DLA structures. This is somehow surprising since the fractal dimension of the annealed structure is determined not only by connectivity but also by the competing effects of excluded volume interactions and configurational entropy, whilst in the rigid DLA only diffusion counts for the fractal-dimension value.