Related papers: Activity-induced microswimmer interactions and coo…
Cooperation is vital for the survival of a swarm$^1$. Large scale cooperation allows murmuring starlings to outmaneuver preying falcons$^2$, shoaling sardines to outsmart sea lions$^3$, and homo sapiens to outlive their Pleistocene…
Locomotion and transport of microorganisms in fluids is an essential aspect of life. Search for food, orientation toward light, spreading of off-spring, and the formation of colonies are only possible due to locomotion. Swimming at the…
Hydrodynamic interactions are crucial for determining the cooperative behavior of microswimmers at low Reynolds numbers. Here we provide a comprehensive analysis of the scaling and strength of the interactions in the case of a pair of…
Catalytic microswimmers convert the chemical energy of a fuel into motion, sustaining spatial chemical gradients and fluid flows that drive their propulsion. This leads to unconventional individual behavior and the emergence of collective…
Microorganisms ofter move in confined, disordered environments, where hydrodynamic couplings can modify their transport behavior. Using extensive finite-element simulations, we investigate the dynamics of microswimmers -- modeled as…
Conspectus: The ability to navigate in chemical gradients, called chemotaxis, is crucial for the survival of microorganisms. It allows them to find food and to escape from toxins. Many microorganisms can produce the chemicals to which they…
Self-propelled micron-size particles suspended in a fluid, like bacteria or synthetic microswimmers, are strongly non-equilibrium systems where particle motility breaks the microscopic detailed balance, often resulting in large-scale…
Microswimmers typically operate in complex environments. In biological systems, often diverse species are simultaneously present and interact with each other. Here, we derive a (time-dependent) particle-scale statistical description, namely…
The properties of biological microswimmers are to a large extent determined by fluid-mediated interactions, which govern their propulsion, perception of their surrounding, and the steering of their motion for feeding or in pursuit.…
Swimming cells and microorganisms must often move though complex fluids that contain an immersed microstructure such as polymer molecules, or filaments. In many important biological processes, such as mammalian reproduction and bacterial…
Active nematics, in their pure form, have demonstrated a plethora of dynamic and steady state behaviors, including large-scale dynamic structures, collective flows, and intricate multi-spatial temporal dynamics. This complexity further…
Understanding the collective actuation of microscopic structures driven by external fields can lead to the development of next-generation autonomous machines. With this goal in mind, we investigated light-induced collective motion of…
Microswimmers often exhibit surprising patterns due to the nonequilibrium nature of their dynamics. Collectively, suspensions of microswimmers appear as a liquid whose properties set it apart from its passive counterpart. To understand the…
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,…
The self-propelled motion of microscopic bodies immersed in a fluid medium is studied using molecular dynamics simulation. The advantage of the atomistic approach is that the detailed level of description allows complete freedom in…
The design of artificial microswimmers is often inspired by the strategies of natural microorganisms. Many of these creatures exploit the fact that elasticity breaks the time-reversal symmetry of motion at low Reynolds numbers, but this…
The behavior of living systems is based on the experience they gained through their interactions with the environment [1]. This experience is stored in the complex biochemical networks of cells and organisms to provide a relationship…
Collective states of inanimate particles self-assemble through physical interactions and thermal motion. Despite some phenomenological resemblance, including signatures of criticality, the autonomous dynamics that binds motile agents into…
The physics of activated escape of objects out of a metastable state plays a key role in diverse scientific areas involving chemical kinetics, diffusion and dislocation motion in solids, nucleation, electrical transport, motion of flux…
An artificial microswimmer drifts in response to spatio-temporal modulations of an activating suspension medium. We consider two competing mechanisms capable of influencing its tactic response: angular fluctuations, which help it explore…