Related papers: Microorganism Billiards
A quantitative model of the mobility of functionalized particles at the interface is pivotal to understanding important systems in biology and nanotechnology. In this work, we investigate the emerging dynamics of particles anchored through…
The incessant activity of swimming microorganisms has a direct physical effect on surrounding microscopic objects, leading to enhanced diffusion far beyond the level of Brownian motion with possible influences on the spatial distribution of…
We present a comprehensive theory of the dynamics and fluctuations of a two-dimensional suspension of polar active particles in an incompressible fluid confined to a substrate. We show that, depending on the sign of a single parameter, a…
A polygon is called rational if the angle between each pair of sides is a rational multiple of $\pi.$ The main theorem we will prove is Theorem 1: For rational polygons, periodic points of the billiard flow are dense in the phase space of…
Microorganisms are ubiquitous in nature and technology. They inhabit diverse environments ranging from small river tributaries and lakes to oceans, as well as wastewater treatment plants and food manufacturing. In many of these…
We introduce and investigate billiard systems with an adjusted ray dynamics that accounts for modifications of the conventional reflection of rays due to universal wave effects. We show that even small modifications of the specular…
In this study, we aim to explore the behavior of microorganisms in response to natural lighting conditions, considering the off-normal angles at which the sun strikes the Earth's surface. To achieve this, we investigate the effect of…
Cells and microorganisms employ dynamic shape changes to enable steering and avoidance for efficient spatial exploration and collective organization. In contrast, active colloids, their synthetic counterparts, currently lack similar…
Undulatory locomotion is a means of self-propulsion that relies on the generation and propagation of waves along a body. As a mode of locomotion it is primitive and relatively simple, yet can be remarkably robust. No wonder then, that it is…
Molecular dynamics simulations of a glass-forming model system are performed under application of a microrheological perturbation on a tagged particle. The trajectory of that particle is studied in its underlying potential energy landscape.…
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 study the behavior of cylindrical objects as they sink into a drygranular bed fluidized due to lateral oscillations. Somewhat unexpectedly, we have found that, within a large range of lateral shaking powers,cylinders with flat bottoms…
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,…
Deformable boundaries are omnipresent in the habitats of swimming microorganisms, leading to intricate hydroelastic couplings. Employing a perturbation theory, valid for small deformations, we study the swimming dynamics of pushers and…
In many biological systems, microorganisms swim through complex polymeric fluids, and usually deform the medium at a rate faster than the inverse fluid relaxation time. We address the basic properties of such life at high Deborah number…
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,…
In this paper we define and study the billiard problem on bounded regions on surfaces of constant curvature. We show that this problem defines a 2-dimensional conservative and reversible dynamical system, defined by a Twist diffeomorphism,…
While billiard systems of various shapes have been used as paradigmatic model systems in the fields of nonlinear dynamics and quantum chaos, few studies have investigated anisotropic billiards. Motivated by the tremendous advances in using…
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…
We consider a class of random billiards in a tube, where reflection angles at collisions with the boundary of the tube are random variables rather than deterministic (and elastic) quantities. We obtain a (non-standard) Central Limit Theorem…