Related papers: Enhanced diffusion by reciprocal swimming
In addition to enabling movement towards environments with favourable living conditions, swimming by microorganisms has also been linked to enhanced mixing and improved nutrient uptake by their populations. Experimental studies have shown…
A self-propelled artificial microswimmer is often modeled as a ballistic Brownian particle moving with constant speed aligned along one of its axis, but changing direction due to random collisions with the environment. Similarly to thermal…
In this Letter, we study the collective behaviour of a large number of self-propelled microswimmers immersed in a fluid. Using unprecedently large-scale lattice Boltzmann simulations, we reproduce the transition to bacterial turbulence. We…
Many parts of biological organisms are comprised of deformable porous media. The biological media is both pliable enough to deform in response to an outside force and can deform by itself using the work of an embedded muscle. For example,…
The properties of liquid water are known to change drastically in confined geometries. A most interesting and intriguing phenomenon is that the diffusion of water is found to be strongly enhanced by the proximity of a hydrophobic confining…
Understanding the transport properties of microorganisms and self-propelled particles in porous media has important implications for human health as well as microbial ecology. In free space, most microswimmers perform diffusive random walks…
We discuss the hydrodynamic collective effects due to active protein molecules that are immersed in lipid bilayer membranes and modeled as stochastic force dipoles. We specifically take into account the presence of the bulk solvent which…
The majority of studies on self-propelled particles and microswimmers concentrates on objects that do not feature a deterministic bending of their trajectory. However, perfect axial symmetry is hardly found in reality, and shape-asymmetric…
It has been argued that an extended, quasi-rigid body evolving freely in curved spacetime can deviate from its natural trajectory by simply performing cyclic deformations. More interestingly, in the limit of rapid cycles, the amount of…
Complex or hostile environments can sometimes inhibit the movement capabilities of diffusive particles or active swimmers, who may thus become stuck in fixed positions. This occurs, for example, in the adhesion of bacteria to surfaces at…
Most classical work on the hydrodynamics of low-Reynolds-number swimming addresses deterministic locomotion in quiescent environments. Thermal fluctuations in fluids are known to lead to a Brownian loss of the swimming direction. As most…
Microbiology is the science of microbes, particularly bacteria. Many bacteria are motile: they are capable of self-propulsion. Among these, a significant class execute so-called run-and-tumble motion: they follow a fairly straight path for…
Cells swimming in confined environments are attracted by surfaces. We measure the steady-state distribution of smooth-swimming bacteria (Escherichia coli) between two glass plates. In agreement with earlier studies, we find a strong…
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…
There is much current interest in modelling suspensions of algae and other micro-organisms for biotechnological exploitation, and many bioreactors are of tubular design. Using generalized Taylor dispersion theory, we develop a…
Marine organisms manipulate their surrounding flow through their swimming dynamics, which affects the transport of their own odor cues. We demonstrate by direct numerical simulations how a group of swimmers, moving at intermediate Reynolds…
A stiff one-armed swimmer in glycerine goes nowhere, but if its arm is elastic, exerting a restorative torque proportional to local curvature, the swimmer can go on its way. Considering this happy consequence and the principles of…
Interactions between microorganisms and their complex flowing environments are essential in many biological systems. We develop a model for microswimmer dynamics in non-Newtonian Poiseuille flows. We predict that swimmers in…
Stochasticity is a defining feature of the pairwise forces governing interactions in biological systems-from molecular motors to cell-cell adhesion-yet its consequences on large-scale dynamics remain poorly understood. Here, we show that…
When an ensemble of particles interact hydrodynamically, they generically display large-scale transient structures such as swirls in sedimenting particles [1], or colloidal strings in sheared suspensions [2]. Understanding these…