English

Generalized Three-Sphere Microswimmers

Soft Condensed Matter 2023-08-22 v2

Abstract

Among several models for microswimmers, the three-sphere microswimmer proposed by Najafi and Golestanian captures the essential mechanism for the locomotion of a microswimmer in a viscous fluid. Owing to its simplicity and flexibility, the original three-sphere model has been extended and generalized in various ways to discuss new swimming mechanisms of microswimmers. We shall provide a systematic and concise review of the various extensions of the three-sphere microswimmers that have been developed by the present authors. In particular, we shall discuss the following seven cases; elastic, thermal, odd, autonomous three-sphere microswimmers; two interacting ones; and those in viscoelastic and structured fluids. The well-known Purcell's scallop theorem can be generalized for stochastic three-sphere microswimmers and also for the locomotion in viscoelastic and structured fluids.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2305.08411,
  title  = {Generalized Three-Sphere Microswimmers},
  author = {Kento Yasuda and Yuto Hosaka and Shigeyuki Komura},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2305.08411},
  year   = {2023}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-28T10:34:24.472Z