Related papers: Dynamics of a microswimmer-microplatelet composite

Undulatory slender objects have been a central theme in the hydrodynamics of swimming at low Reynolds number, where the slender body is usually assumed to be inextensible, although some microorganisms and artificial microrobots largely…

We present a continuum level analytical model of a droplet of active contractile fluid consisting of filaments and motors. We calculate the steady state flows that result from a splayed polarisation of the filaments. We account for the…

Microorganisms are rarely found in Nature swimming freely in an unbounded fluid. Instead, they typically encounter other organisms, hard walls, or deformable boundaries such as free interfaces or membranes. Hydrodynamic interactions between…

A popular method to induce synthetic propulsion at the microscale is to use the forces created by surface-produced gas bubbles inside the asymmetric body of a catalytic swimmer (referred to in the literature as microrocket). Gas bubbles…

We propose minimal models of one-, two- and three-dimensional micro-swimmers at low Reynolds number with a periodic non-reciprocal motion. These swimmers are either "pushers" or "pullers" of fluid along the swimming axis, or combination of…

Active systems contain self-propelled particles and can spontaneously self-organize into patterns making them attractive candidates for the self-assembly of smart soft materials. One key limitation of our present understanding of these…

Simple models are used throughout the physical sciences as a means of developing intuition, capturing phenomenology, and qualitatively reproducing observations. In studies of microswimming, simple force-dipole models are commonplace,…

A minimal design for a molecular swimmer is proposed that is a based on a mechanochemical propulsion mechanism. Conformational changes are induced by electrostatic actuation when specific parts of the molecule temporarily acquire net…

We study the self-propulsion of spherical droplets as simplified hydrodynamic models of swimming microorganisms or artificial microswimmers. In contrast to approaches, which start from active velocity fields produced by the system, we…

The flow field generated by a swimming bacterium serves as a fundamental building block for understanding hydrodynamic interactions between bacteria. Although the flow field generated by a force dipole (stresslet) well captures the fluid…

The microaerophilic magnetotactic bacterium Magnetospirillum gryphiswaldense swims along magnetic field lines using a single flagellum at each cell pole. It is believed that this magnetotactic behavior enables cells to seek optimal oxygen…

We theoretically and computationally study the low-Reynolds-number hydrodynamics of a linear active microswimmer surfing on a compressible thin fluid layer characterized by an odd viscosity. Since the underlying three-dimensional fluid is…

Biological and artificial microswimmers often have to propel through a variety of environments, ranging from heterogeneous suspending media to strong geometrical confinement. Under confinement, local flow fields generated by microswimmers,…

We discuss the path of a tracer particle as a microswimmer moves past on an infinite straight trajectory. If the tracer is sufficiently far from the path of the swimmer it moves in a closed loop. As the initial distance between the tracer…

Microswimmers in nature often experience spatial gradients of viscosity. In this work we develop theoretical results for the dynamics of active particles, biological or otherwise, swimming through viscosity gradients. We model the active…

The humble Petri dish is perhaps the simplest setting in which to examine the locomotion of swimming organisms, particularly those whose body size is tens of microns to millimetres. The fluid layer in such a container has a bottom no-slip…

Microswimmer suspensions self-organize into complex spatio-temporal flow patterns, including vortex lattices and mesoscale turbulence. Here we explore the consequences for the motion of passive tracers, based on a continuum model for the…

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…

Artificial bacteria flagella (ABFs) are magnetic helical micro-swimmers that can be remotely controlled via a uniform, rotating magnetic field. Previous studies have used the heterogeneous response of microswimmers to external magnetic…

The trajectories of microswimmers moving in narrow channels of widths comparable to their sizes are significantly altered when they encounter another microswimmer moving in the opposite direction. The consequence of these encounters is a…