Related papers: Oscillatory Flows Induced by Microorganisms Swimmi…
The dynamics of periodic swimming is studied for two models of a deformable sphere, the dipole-quadrupole model and the quadrupole-octupole model. For the two models the solution of the Navier-Stokes equations can be found exactly to second…
Active flexible filaments form the classical continuum framework for modelling the locomotion of spermatozoa and algae driven by the periodic oscillation of flagella. This framework also applies to the locomotion of various artificial…
We extend the concept of optical flow with spatiotemporal regularisation to a dynamic non-Euclidean setting. Optical flow is traditionally computed from a sequence of flat images. The purpose of this paper is to introduce variational motion…
We first highlight theoretically a microfluidic configuration that allows to measure two fundamental parameters describing mass transport through a membrane: the solute permeability coefficient $\mathcal{L}_D$, and the associated reflection…
Excitable media are systems which are at rest in the absence of external input but which respond to a sufficiently strong stimulus by sending a wave of "excitation" across the medium. Examples include cardiac and cortical tissue, and in…
Oscillatory flows have become an indispensable tool in microfluidics, inducing inertial effects for displacing and manipulating fluid-borne objects in a reliable, controllable, and label-free fashion. However, the quantitative description…
Cilia and flagella exhibit regular bending waves that perform mechanical work on the surrounding fluid, to propel cellular swimmers and pump fluids inside organisms. Here, we quantify a force-velocity relationship of the beating flagellum,…
We analyse the effect of confining rigid and elastic boundaries on the motility of a model dipolar microswimmer. Flexible boundaries are deformed by the velocity field of the swimmer in such a way that the motility of both extensile and…
Many motile microorganisms react to environmental light cues with a variety of motility responses guiding cells towards better conditions for survival and growth. The use of spatial light modulators could help to elucidate the mechanisms of…
Hydrodynamic interactions between swimming or flying organisms can lead to complex flows on the scale of the group. These emergent fluid dynamics are often more complex than a linear superposition of individual organism flows, especially at…
Understanding the collective actuation of microscopic structures driven by external fields can lead to the development of next-generation autonomous machines. With this goal in mind, we investigated light-induced collective motion of…
The self-propelled motion of microscopic bodies immersed in a fluid medium is studied using molecular dynamics simulation. The advantage of the atomistic approach is that the detailed level of description allows complete freedom in…
Several recent experiments suggest that rather generally the diffusion of enzymes may be augmented through their activity. We demonstrate that such swimming motility can emerge from the interplay between the enzyme energy landscape and the…
Some micro-algae are sensitive to light intensity gradients. This property is known as phototaxis: the algae swim toward a light source (positive phototaxis). We use this property to control the motion of micro-algae within a Poiseuille…
Biological and artificial microswimmers often have to propel through a variety of environments, ranging from heterogeneous suspending media to strong geometrical confinement. Under confinement, local flow fields generated by microswimmers,…
In video-records, objects moving in intracellular regions are often hardly detectable and identifiable. In order to squeeze the information on the intracellular flows, we propose an automatic method of reconstruction of intracellular flow…
We describe experiments and simulations demonstrating the propulsion of a neutrally-buoyant swimmer that consists of a pair of spheres attached by a spring, immersed in a vibrating fluid. The vibration of the fluid induces relative motion…
The design of artificial microswimmers is often inspired by the strategies of natural microorganisms. Many of these creatures exploit the fact that elasticity breaks the time-reversal symmetry of motion at low Reynolds numbers, but this…
Cellular appendages such as cilia and flagella represent universal tools enabling cells and microbes, among other essential functionalities, to propel themselves in diverse environments. In its planktonic, i.e. freely swimming, state the…
We investigate theoretically the collective dynamics of a suspension of low Reynolds number swimmers that are confined to two dimensions by a thin fluid film. Our model swimmer is characterized by internal degrees of freedom which locally…