Related papers: Noisy swimming at low Reynolds numbers
Motility is a fundamental survival strategy of bacteria to navigate porous environments. Swimming cells thrive in quiescent wetlands and sediments at the bottom of the marine water column, where they mediate many essential biogeochemical…
We experimentally study the motion of light-activated colloidal microswimmers in a viscoelastic fluid. We find that, in such a non-Newtonian environment, the active colloids undergo an unexpected transition from enhanced angular diffusion…
Turbulence is ubiquitous, from oceanic currents to small-scale biological and quantum systems. Self-sustained turbulent motion in microbial suspensions presents an intriguing example of collective dynamical behavior amongst the simplest…
Microswimmer suspensions in Newtonian fluids exhibit unusual macroscale properties, such as a superfluidic behavior, which can be harnessed to perform work at microscopic scales. Since most biological fluids are non-Newtonian, here we study…
Efficient swimming at low Reynolds numbers is a major concern of microbots. To compare the efficiencies of different swimmers we introduce the notion of ``swimming drag coefficient'' which allows for the ranking of swimmers. We find the…
Computational scientists have investigated swimming performance across a multitude of different systems for decades. Most models depend on numerous model parameters and performance is sensitive to those parameters. In this paper, parameter…
Cell motility in viscous fluids is ubiquitous and affects many biological processes, including reproduction, infection, and the marine life ecosystem. Here we review the biophysical and mechanical principles of locomotion at the small…
Although the dynamics of colloids in the vicinity of a solid interface has been widely characterized in the past, experimental studies of Brownian diffusion close to an air-water interface are rare and limited to particle-interface gap…
The locomotion of microorganisms and spermatozoa in complex viscoelastic fluids is of critical importance in many biological processes such as fertilization, infection, and biofilm formation. Depending on their propulsion mechanisms,…
The swimming of a circular disk at low Reynolds number is studied for distortion waves along its two planar surfaces with wavelength much smaller than the size of the disk. The calculation is based on an extension of Taylor's work for a…
Micro-organisms usually can swim in their liquid environment by flagellar or ciliary beating. In this numerical work, we analyze the influence of flagellar beating on the orbits of a swimming cell in a shear flow. We also calculate the…
Run-and-tumble is a common but vital strategy that bacteria employ to explore environment suffused with boundaries, as well as to escape from entrapment. In this study we reveal how this strategy and the resulting dynamical behavior can be…
Swimming microorganisms can influence the diffusion of passive particles. The effect of this swimmer-particle interaction depends on different properties, such as the hydrodynamic field of the swimmer and the relative sizes of…
Self-propelled microorganisms, such as unicellular algae or bacteria, swim along their director relative to the fluid velocity. Under a steady shear flow the director rotates in close orbit, a periodic structure that is preserved under an…
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…
We study the three-dimensional dynamics of a spherical microswimmer in cylindrical Poiseuille flow which can be mapped onto a Hamiltonian system. Swinging and tumbling trajectories are identified. In 2D they are equivalent to oscillating…
Microorganisms such as bacteria often swim in fluid environments that cannot be classified as Newtonian. Many biological fluids contain polymers or other heterogeneities which may yield complex rheology. For a given set of boundary…
Understanding how the physical properties of a fluid influence bacterial behavior is essential for explaining how microorganisms interact with their environment and with animal hosts. Here, we examine how changes in fluid viscosity and…
The beating flagella of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii play a prominent role in cellular mechanics, enabling cells to both displace and sense surrounding fluid. Specifically, flagellum-induced fluid transport enables microalgae to…
We study the free diffusion in two dimensions of active-Brownian swimmers subject to passive fluctuations on the translational motion and to active fluctuations on the rotational one. The Smoluchowski equation is derived from a…