Related papers: Confinement enhances the diversity of microbial fl…

Self-propelled droplets serve as ideal model systems to delve deeper into understanding of the motion of biological micro-swimmers by simulating their motility. Biological microorganisms are renowned for showcasing a diverse array of…

Marine microorganisms must cope with complex flow patterns and even turbulence as they navigate the ocean. To survive they must avoid predation and find efficient energy sources. A major difficulty in analysing possible survival strategies…

Flows of particles through bottlenecks are ubiquitous in nature and industry, involving both dry granular materials and suspensions. However, practical limitations of conventional experimental setups hinder the full understanding of these…

There is a long-standing question about the molecular configuration of interfacial water molecules in the proximity of solid surfaces, particularly carbon atoms which play a crucial role in electrochemistry and biology. In this study, the…

Microscale propulsion is integral to numerous biomedical systems, for example biofilm formation and human reproduction, where the surrounding fluids comprise suspensions of polymers. These polymers endow the fluid with non-Newtonian…

We analyze thermodynamics of water samples confined in nanopores and prove that although the freezing temperature can be dramatically lower, the suppression of the ice nucleation leading to the freezing temperature depression is a truly…

We present new constrained and free-swimming experiments and simulations of a pair of pitching hydrofoils interacting in a minimal school. The hydrofoils have an out-of-phase synchronization and they are varied through in-line, staggered,…

The encounter of diffusing entities underlies a wide range of natural phenomena. The dynamics of these first-passage dynamics are strongly influenced by confining geometries. Confinement modifies microscopic diffusion through conservative…

We derive from first principles a three-dimensional theory of self-propelled particle swarming in a viscous fluid environment. Our model predicts emergent collective behavior that depends critically on fluid opacity, mechanism of…

Unicellular microscopic organisms living in aqueous environments outnumber all other creatures on Earth. A large proportion of them are able to self-propel in fluids with a vast diversity of swimming gaits and motility patterns. In this…

The dynamics of entrainment of finite-size heavy particles in a turbulent open channel flow over a smooth surface are analyzed. Three types of simulations, namely with freely moving, rotation-constrained, and spanwise-motion-constrained…

The controllability of passive microparticles that are advected with the fluid flow generated by an actively controlled one is studied. The particles are assumed to be suspended in a viscous fluid and well separated so that the far-field…

Various microswimmers move along circles rather than straight lines due to their swimming mechanisms, body shapes or hydrodynamic effects. Here, we adopt the concepts of stochastic thermodynamics to analyze circle swimmers confined in a…

The description of hydrodynamic interactions between a particle and the surrounding liquid, down to the nanometer scale, is of primary importance since confined liquids are ubiquitous in many natural and technological situations. In this…

Nanoscale confinement of molecules in a fluid can result in enhanced viscosity, local fluidic order, or collective motion. Confinement also affects ion transport and/or the rate and equilibrium concentration in a chemical reaction, all of…

Bacteria exist in a free-swimming state or in a sessile biofilm state. The transition from free-swimming to sessile mode is characterized by changes in gene expression which alter, among others,the mechanics of flagellar motility. In this…

Confined motions in complex environments are ubiquitous in microbiology. These situations invariably involve the intricate coupling between fluid flow, soft boundaries, surface forces and fluctuations. In the present study, such a coupling…

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…

In active systems, whose constituents have non-equilibrium dynamics at local level, fluid-fluid phase separation is widely observed. Examples include the formation of membraneless organelles within cells; the clustering of self-propelled…

We consider a suspension of active rigid particles (swimmers) in a steady Stokes flow, where particles are distributed according to a stationary ergodic random process, and we study its homogenization in the macroscopic limit. A key point…