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Related papers: Mixing by Swimming Algae

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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…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2014-05-07 Alan Cheng Hou Tsang , Eva Kanso

In the past decade the volvocine green algae, spanning from the unicellular $Chlamydomonas$ to multicellular $Volvox$, have emerged as model organisms for a number of problems in biological fluid dynamics. These include flagellar…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2014-09-22 Raymond E. Goldstein

A promising approach to transport cargo at the microscale lies within the use of self-propelled microorganisms, whose motion entrains that of passive particles. However, most applications remain limited to just a few passive particles of…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-03-30 Taha Laroussi , Julien Bouvard , Etienne Jambon-Puillet , Mojtaba Jarrahi , Gabriel Amselem

Many different microswimmers propel themselves using flagella that beat periodically. The shape of the flagellar beat and swimming speed have been observed to change with fluid rheology. We quantify changes in the flagellar waveforms of…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2025-02-25 Kelli E. Gutierrez , Becca Thomases , Paulo E. Arratia , Robert D. Guy

Suspensions of self-propelled particles, such as swimming micro-organisms, are known to undergo complex dynamics as a result of hydrodynamic interactions. This fluid dynamics video presents a numerical simulation of such a suspension, based…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2009-10-20 David Saintillan , Amir Alizadeh Pahlavan

The cell body of flagellated microalgae is commonly considered to act merely as a passive load during swimming, and a larger body size would simply reduce the speed. In this work, we use numerical simulations based on a boundary element…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2026-01-28 Xiaoping Hu , Zhaorong Liu , Da Wei , Shiyuan Hu

Active matter comprises individually driven units that convert locally stored energy into mechanical motion. Interactions between driven units lead to a variety of non-equilibrium collective phenomena in active matter. One of such phenomena…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2021-06-15 Mingji Huang , Wensi Hu , Siyuan Yang , Quan-Xing Liu , H. P. Zhang

In this letter we propose a kinematic model to show how collisions with a surface and rotational Brownian motion give rise to the accumulation of micro-swimmers near a surface. In this model, an elongated microswimmer invariably travels…

Biological Physics · Physics 2008-12-23 Guanglai Li , Jay X. Tang

Active fluids can develop spontaneous flow instabilities and complex patterns. However, spatio-temporal control of active particles has remained challenging, despite its relevance in biological and applied contexts. Here, we harnessed…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-09-23 Isabelle Eisenmann , Marco Vona , Nicolas Desprat , Takuji Ishikawa , Eric Lauga , Raphaël Jeanneret

We experimentally investigate the effects of polymer additives on the collective dynamics of swarming Serratia marcescens in quasi two-dimensional (2D) liquid films. We find that even minute amounts of polymers (< 20 ppm) can significantly…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2022-08-09 Ranjiangshang Ran , David A. Gagnon , Alexander Morozov , Paulo E. Arratia

We present a Brownian dynamics study of a 2d bath of active particles interacting among each other through usual steric interactions and, additionally, via non-reciprocal avoidant orientational interactions. We motivate them by the fact…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2022-10-24 Milos Knezevic , Till Welker , Holger Stark

Self-propelled particles move along circles rather than along a straight line when their driving force does not coincide with their propagation direction. Examples include confined bacteria and spermatozoa, catalytically driven nanorods,…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2008-08-18 Sven van Teeffelen , Hartmut Löwen

We have studied the correlated Brownian motion of micron-sized particles suspended in water and confined between two plates. The hydrodynamic interaction between the particles exhibits three anomalies. (i) The transverse coupling is…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2007-05-23 Bianxiao Cui , Haim Diamant , Binhua Lin , Stuart A. Rice

Eukaryotic flagella are active structures with a complex architecture of microtubules, motor proteins and elastic links. They are capable of whiplike motions driven by motors sliding along filaments that are themselves constrained at an…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2012-11-22 Raghunath Chelakkot , Arvind Gopinath , L. Mahadevan , Michael F. Hagan

Microorganisms, such as E.Coli, are known to display upstream behavior and respond rheotactically to shear flows. In particular, E.Coli suspensions have been shown to display strong sensitivity to spatial constrictions, leading to an…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2024-01-24 Armin Maleki , Malihe Ghodrat , Ignacio Pagonabarraga

Micron-sized self-propelled (active) particles can be considered as model systems for characterizing more complex biological organisms like swimming bacteria or motile cells. We produce asymmetric microswimmers by soft lithography and study…

We introduce a device developed to perform a 3D tracking of passive or active particles under flow, confined in a medium of hundreds micrometers wide. Micro-objects are placed inside a vertical glass capillary and two mirrors are set behind…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-06-09 J. Moscatelli , X Benoit Gonin , F. Elias

Geometric confinement plays an important role in the dynamics of natural and synthetic microswimmers from bacterial cells to self-propelled particles in high-throughput microfluidic devices. However, little is known about the effects of…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2014-11-13 Alan Cheng Hou Tsang , Eva Kanso

Groups of beating flagella or cilia often synchronize so that neighboring filaments have identical frequencies and phases. A prime example is provided by the unicellular biflagellate Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, which typically displays…

Many biological fluids are composed of suspended polymers immersed in a viscous fluid. A prime example is mucus, where the polymers are also known to form a network. While the presence of this microstructure is linked with an overall…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2024-10-10 Adam K. Townsend , Eric E. Keaveny