Related papers: Cilia beating patterns are not hydrodynamically op…
In the last few years, there have been many new developments and significant accomplishments in the research of bionic robot fishes. However, in terms of swimming performance, existing bionic robot fishes lag far behind fish, prompting…
Bioclogging, the clogging of pores with living particles, is a complex process that involves various coupled mechanisms such as hydrodynamics and particle properties. This article explores bioclogging at the microscale level. At this scale,…
We study theoretically the behavior of a class of hydrodynamic dipoles. This study is motivated by recent experiments on synthetic and biological swimmers in microfluidic \textit{Hele-Shaw} type geometries. Under such confinement, a…
We employ a model system, called rowers, as a generic physical framework to define the problem of the coordinated motion of cilia (the metachronal wave) as a far from equilibrium process. Rowers are active (two-state) oscillators…
Many micro-swimmers propel themselves by rotating micro-cylindrical organelles such as flagella or cilia. These cylindrical organelles almost never live in free space, yet their motions in a confining geometry can be counter-intuitive. For…
We use in vivo measurements of swimming bacteria in an optical trap to determine fundamental properties of bacterial propulsion. In particular, we determine the propulsion matrix, which relates the angular velocity of the flagellum to the…
Simple, linear equations relate microscopic swimmers to the corresponding gliders and pumps. They have the following set of consequences: The swimming velocity of free swimmers can be inferred from the force on the tethered swimmer and vice…
Biological systems are promising substrates for computation because they naturally process environmental information through complex internal dynamics. In this study, we investigate whether bacterial metabolic models can act as physical…
The flagellated bacterium Escherichia coli is increasingly used experimentally as a self-propelled swimmer. To obtain meaningful, quantitative results that are comparable between different laboratories, reproducible protocols are needed to…
Synchronization of two actuated sheets serves as a simple model for the interaction between flagellated microswimmers. Various factors, including inertia, sheet elasticity, and fluid viscoelasticity, have been suggested to facilitate the…
Bacterial sensor systems can be used for the detection and measurement of molecular signal concentrations. The dynamics of the sensor directly depend on the biological properties of the bacterial sensor cells; manipulation of these features…
The structure of swimmers' wakes is often assumed to be an indicator of swimming performance, that is, how momentum is produced and energy is consumed. Here, we discuss three cases where this assumption fails. In general, great care should…
It has been a long-standing problem how schooling fish optimize their motion by exploiting the vortices shed by the others. A recent experimental study showed that a pair of fish reduce energy consumption by matching the phases of their…
Swimming organisms can escape their predators by creating and harnessing unsteady flow fields through their body motions. Stochastic optimization and flow simulations have identified escape patterns that are consistent with those observed…
We present a fast, high-throughput method for characterizing the motility of microorganisms in 3D based on standard imaging microscopy. Instead of tracking individual cells, we analyse the spatio-temporal fluctuations of the intensity in…
We discuss the behavior of partially wetting liquids on a rotating cylinder using a model that takes into account the effects of gravity, viscosity, rotation, surface tension and wettability. Such a system can be considered as a prototype…
Taking inspiration from the crawling motion of biological cells on a substrate, we consider a physical model of self-propulsion where the spatio-temporal driving can involve both, a mechanical actuation by active force couples, and a…
Motivated by the aim of understanding the effect of media heterogeneity on the swimming dynamics of flagellated bacteria, we study the rotation and swimming of rigid helices in dilute suspensions experimentally and theoretically. We first…
We study self propelled stokesian robots composed of assemblies of balls, in dimensions 2 and 3, and prove that they are able to control their position and orientation. This is a result of controllability, and its proof relies on applying…
A number of swimming microorganisms such as ciliates ($\textit{Opalina}$) and multicellular colonies of flagellates ($\textit{Volvox}$) are approximately spherical in shape and swim using beating arrays of cilia or short flagella covering…