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In this paper we show in a covariant and gauge invariant way that in general relativity, tidal forces are actually a hidden form of gravitational waves. This must be so because gravitational effects cannot occur faster than the speed of…
We study two microswimmers consisting of a spherical rigid head and a passive elastic tail. In the first one the tail is clamped to the head, and the system oscillates under the action of an external torque. In the second one, head and tail…
We investigate the dynamics of a magnetoelastic robot with a dipolar magnetic head and a slender elastic body as it performs undulatory strokes and burrows through water-saturated granular beds. The robot is actuated by an oscillating…
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…
Drag-based swimming with rowing appendages, fins, and webbed feet is a widely adapted locomotion form in aquatic animals. To develop effective underwater and swimming vehicles, a wide range of bioinspired drag-based paddles have been…
Jellyfish - majestic, energy efficient, and one of the oldest species that inhabits the oceans. It is perhaps the second item, their efficiency, that has captivated scientists for decades into investigating their locomotive behavior. Yet,…
Many swimmers, especially small to medium-sized animals, use intermittent locomotion that differs from continuous swimming of large species. This type of locomotion, called burst-and-coast, is often associated with an energetic advantage.…
Two-dimensional free-surface potential flows of an ideal fluid over a strongly inhomogeneous bottom are investigated with the help of conformal mappings. Weakly-nonlinear and exact nonlinear equations of motion are derived by the…
Competition between biological species in marine environments is affected by the motion of the surrounding fluid. An effective 2D compressibility can arise, for example, from the convergence and divergence of water masses at the depth at…
There is increasing evidence that mammalian cells not only crawl on substrates but can also swim in fluids. To elucidate the mechanisms of the onset of motility of cells in suspension, a model which couples actin and myosin kinetics to…
In this article, we consider a swimmer (i.e. a self-deformable body) immersed in a fluid, the flow of which is governed by the stationary Stokes equations. This model is relevant for studying the locomotion of microorganisms or micro robots…
Translational and rotational swimming at small Reynolds number of a planar assembly of identical spheres immersed in an incompressible viscous fluid is studied on the basis of a set of equations of motion for the individual spheres. The…
Many eukaryotic cells undergo frequent shape changes (described as amoeboid motion) that enable them to move forward. We investigate the effect of confinement on a minimal model of amoeboid swimmer. Complex pictures emerge: (i) The…
We investigate the hydrodynamic interactions between microorganisms swimming at low Reynolds number. By considering simple model swimmers, and combining analytic and numerical approaches, we investigate the time-averaged flow field around a…
We explore the mechanism underlying the anomalous rheology of puller-type microswimmer suspensions through direct hydrodynamic simulations. Puller-type swimmers generate contractile flow fields along their swimming direction, leading to…
Purcell's scallop theorem states that swimmers deforming their shapes in a time-reversible manner ("reciprocal" motion) cannot swim. Using numerical simulations and theoretical calculations we show here that in a fluctuating environment,…
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…
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…
We examine the motion of rigid, ellipsoidal swimmers subjected to a steady vortex flow in two dimensions. Numerical simulations of swimmers in a spatially periodic array of vortices reveal a range of possible behaviors, including trapping…
Motivated by the swimming of sperm in the non-Newtonian fluids of the female mammalian reproductive tract, we examine the swimming of filaments in the nonlinear viscoelastic Upper Convected Maxwell model. We obtain the swimming velocity and…