Related papers: Steering chiral swimmers along noisy helical paths
Bacterial chemotactic sensing converts noisy chemical signals into running and tumbling. We analyze the static sensing limits of mixed Tar/Tsr chemoreceptor clusters in individual Escherichia coli cells using a heterogeneous…
The dynamics of self-locomotion of active particles in aligned or liquid crystalline fluids strongly deviates from that in simple isotropic media. We explore the long-time dynamics of a swimmer moving in a three-dimensional smectic liquid…
Contrasting the well explored problem on how to steer a macroscopic agent like an airplane or a moon lander to optimally reach a target, "optimal microswimming", i.e. the quest for the optimal navigation strategy for microswimmers, remains…
We explore a mechanism of the anomalous rheology of active suspensions by hydrodynamic simulations using model pusher swimmers. Our simulations demonstrate that hydrodynamic interactions under shear flow systematically orient swimmers along…
Recent numerical simulations of hard helical particle systems unveiled the existence of a novel chiral nematic phase, termed screw-like, characterised by the helical organization of the particle C$_2$ symmetry axes round the nematic…
In simple fluids, such as water, invariance under parity and time-reversal symmetry imposes that the rotation of constituent 'atoms' are determined by the flow and that viscous stresses damp motion. Activation of the rotational degrees of…
Chemical signaling is one of the ubiquitous mechanisms by which inter-cellular communication takes place at the microscopic level, particularly via chemotaxis. Such multi-cellular systems are popularly studied using continuum, mean-field…
Many biological microswimmers are capable of chemotaxis, i.e., they can sense an ambient chemical gradient and adjust their mechanism of motility to move towards or away from the source of the gradient. Synthetic active colloids endowed…
We show that spontaneous density segregation in dense systems of aligning circle swimmers is a condensation phenomenon at odds with the phase separation scenarios usually observed in two-dimensional active matter. The condensates, which…
A self-consistent radiation-hydrodynamics model of an accretion channel of subcritical X-ray pulsars is constructed. The influence of the presence of resonance in the scattering cross-section on the accretion process and radiation transfer…
A minimal design for a molecular swimmer is proposed that is a based on a mechanochemical propulsion mechanism. Conformational changes are induced by electrostatic actuation when specific parts of the molecule temporarily acquire net…
The response of microbes to external signals is mediated by biochemical networks with intrinsic time scales. These time scales give rise to a memory that impacts cellular behaviour. Here we study theoretically the role of cellular memory in…
We describe a method for programming the autonomous navigation of active colloidal particles in response to spatial gradients in a scalar stimulus. Functional behaviors such as positive or negative chemotaxis are encoded in the particle…
Oscillatory flows are commonly experienced by swimming microorganisms in the environment, industrial applications and rheological investigations. We experimentally characterise the response of the alga {\it Dunaliella salina} to oscillatory…
The nonlinear flow behaviour of a viscoelastic gel formed due to entangled, cylindrical micelles in aqueous solutions of the surfactant CTAT has been studied. On subjecting the system to a step shear rate lying above a certain value, the…
Compared to isotropic liquids, orientational order of nematic liquid crystals makes their rheological properties more involved, and thus requires fine control of the flow parameters to govern the orientational patterns. In microfluidic…
The creation of synthetic systems that emulate the defining properties of living matter, such as motility, gradient-sensing, signalling and replication, is a grand challenge of biomimetics. Such imitations of life crucially contain active…
Phoretic swimmers are a class of artificial active particles that has received significant attention in recent years. By making use of self-generated gradients (e.g. in temperature, electric potential or some chemical product) phoretic…
Bacteria such as Escherichia coli (E. coli) exhibit biased motion if kept in a spatially non-uniform chemical environment. Here, we bring out unique time-dependent characteristics of bacterial chemotaxis, in response to a diffusing spatial…
While it is commonly observed that the shape dynamics of mammalian cells can undergo large random fluctuations, theoretical models aiming at capturing cell mechanics often focus on the deterministic part of the motion. In this paper, we…