Related papers: A model of hydrodynamic interaction between swimmi…
Active droplets are artificial microswimmers built from a liquid dispersion by microfluidic tools and showing self-propelled motion. These systems hold particular interest for mimicking biological phenomena, such as some aspects of cell…
The pressure exerted on a wall by a gas at equilibrium does not depend on the shape of the confining potential defining the wall. In contrast, it has been shown recently [A.P. Solon et al., Nat. Phys. 11, 673 (2015)] that a gas of…
The spatiotemporal dynamics in systems of active self-propelled particles is controlled by the propulsion mechanism in combination with various direct interactions, such as steric repulsion, hydrodynamics, and chemical fields. Yet, these…
We develop a minimal hydrodynamic model, without an orientational order parameter, for assemblies of contractile swimmers encapsulated in a droplet of a binary-fluid emulsion. Our model uses two coupled scalar order parameters, $\phi$ and…
We consider the tracer diffusion $D_{rr}$ that arises from the run-and-tumble motion of low Reynolds number swimmers, such as bacteria. Assuming a dilute suspension, where the bacteria move in uncorrelated runs of length $\lambda$, we…
Active dumbbell suspensions constitute one of the simplest model system for collective swimming at low Reynolds number. Generalizing recent work, we derive and analyze stroke-averaged equations of motion that capture the effective…
Inspired by the classical Kepler and Rutherford problem, we investigate an analogous set-up in the context of active microswimmers: the behavior of a deformable microswimmer in a swirl flow. First we identify new steady bound states in the…
With the help of molecular dynamics simulations we study an ensemble of active dumbbells in purely repulsive interaction. We derive the phase diagram in the density-activity plane and we characterise the various phases with liquid, hexatic…
Bacteria exist in a free-swimming state or in a sessile biofilm state. The transition from free-swimming to sessile mode is characterized by changes in gene expression which alter, among others,the mechanics of flagellar motility. In this…
We study the spreading of a bacterial colony undergoing turbulent like collective motion. We present two minimalistic models to investigate the interplay between population growth and coherent structures arising from turbulence. Using…
Motility is fundamental to the survival and proliferation of microorganisms. The E. coli bacterium propels itself using a bundle of rotating helical flagella. If one flagellum reverses its rotational direction, it leaves the bundle,…
We investigate the dynamics of the Fisher equation for the spreading of micro-organisms in one dimension subject to both turbulent convection and diffusion. We show that for strong enough turbulence, bacteria, for example, track in a…
Experiment shows that dumbbells, placed inside a tilted hollow cylindrical drum that rotates slowly around its axis, climb uphill by forming dynamically stable pairs, seemingly against the pull of gravity. Analysis of this experiment shows…
A study is made of how active membrane proteins can modify the long wavelength mechanics of fluid membranes. The activity of the proteins is modelled as disturbing the protein surroundings through non-local force distributions of which a…
Using collision driven discrete molecular dynamics (DMD), we investigate the thermodynamics and dynamics of systems of 500 dumbbell molecules interacting by a purely repulsive ramp-like discretized potential, consisting of $n$ steps of…
Microswimmers typically operate in complex environments. In biological systems, often diverse species are simultaneously present and interact with each other. Here, we derive a (time-dependent) particle-scale statistical description, namely…
Biological microswimmers such as bacteria and sperm cells often encounter complex biological fluid environments. Here we use the well-known squirmer microswimmer model to show the importance of the local fluid microstructure and…
A collection of microswimmers immersed in an incompressible fluid is characterised by strong interactions due to the long-range nature of the hydrodynamic fields generated by individual organisms. As a result, suspensions of rear-actuated…
Within biological fluid dynamics, it is conventional to distinguish between "puller" and "pusher" microswimmers on the basis of the forward or aft location of the flagella relative to the cell body: typically, bacteria are pushers and algae…
Peritrichous bacteria synchronize and bundle their flagella to actively swim while disruption of the bundle leads to tumbling. It is still not known whether the number of flagella represents an evolutionary adaptation towards optimizing…