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In this letter we propose a kinematic model to show how collisions with a surface and rotational Brownian motion give rise to the accumulation of micro-swimmers near a surface. In this model, an elongated microswimmer invariably travels…

Biological Physics · Physics 2008-12-23 Guanglai Li , Jay X. Tang

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,…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2008-08-18 Sven van Teeffelen , Hartmut Löwen

Microorganisms, such as E.Coli, are known to display upstream behavior and respond rheotactically to shear flows. In particular, E.Coli suspensions have been shown to display strong sensitivity to spatial constrictions, leading to an…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2024-01-24 Armin Maleki , Malihe Ghodrat , Ignacio Pagonabarraga

The stochastic trajectories of molecules in living cells, as well as the dynamics in many other complex systems, often exhibit memory in their path over long periods of time. In addition, these systems can show dynamic heterogeneities due…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2024-07-10 Michał Balcerek , Agnieszka Wyłomańska , Krzysztof Burnecki , Ralf Metzler , Diego Krapf

Fractional Brownian motion, a stochastic process with long-time correlations between its increments, is a prototypical model for anomalous diffusion. We analyze fractional Brownian motion in the presence of a reflecting wall by means of…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2018-02-21 Alexander H. O. Wada , Thomas Vojta

Microswimmers such as E. Coli bacteria accumulate and exhibit an intriguing dynamics near walls, governed by hydrodynamic and steric interactions. Insight into the underlying mechanisms and predominant interactions demand a detailed…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2020-07-03 S. Mahdiyeh Mousavi , Gerhard Gompper , Roland G. Winkler

Bacteria commonly inhabit porous environments such as host tissues, soil, and marine sediments, where complex geometries constrain and redirect their motion. Although bacterial motility has been studied in porous media, the roles of cell…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-12-22 David Gao , Zeyuan Wang , Mihika Jain , Arnold J. T. M. Mathijssen , Ran Tao

Many swimming bacteria naturally inhabit confined environments, yet how confinement influences their swimming behaviors remains unclear. Here, we combine experiments, continuum modeling and particle-based simulations to investigate…

Biological Physics · Physics 2025-10-13 Da Wei , Shiyuan Hu , Tangmiao Tang , Yaochen Yang , Fanlong Meng , Yi Peng

The motion of cells in tissues is an ubiquitous phenomenon. In particular, in monolayered cell colonies in vitro, pronounced collective behavior with swirl-like motion has been observed deep within a cell colony, while at the same time, the…

Biological Physics · Physics 2024-06-03 Debarati Sarkar , Gerhard Gompper , Jens Elgeti

Cellular appendages such as cilia and flagella represent universal tools enabling cells and microbes, among other essential functionalities, to propel themselves in diverse environments. In its planktonic, i.e. freely swimming, state the…

The beating flagella of the green alga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii play a prominent role in cellular mechanics, enabling cells to both displace and sense surrounding fluid. Specifically, flagellum-induced fluid transport enables microalgae to…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2026-03-10 Md Iftekhar Yousuf Emon , Gregorius R. Pradipta , Xiang Cheng , Xin Yong

We investigate exploration patterns of a microswimmer, modeled as an active Brownian particle, searching for a target region located in a well of an energy landscape and separated from the initial position of the particle by high barriers.…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2021-09-02 Luigi Zanovello , Pietro Faccioli , Thomas Franosch , Michele Caraglio

Recent research has shown that motile cells can adapt their mode of propulsion depending on the environment in which they find themselves. One mode is swimming by blebbing or other shape changes, and in this paper we analyze a class of…

Fluid Dynamics · Physics 2016-10-10 Qixuan Wang , Hans G. Othmer

Swimming at a micrometer scale demands particular strategies. Indeed when inertia is negligible as compared to viscous forces (i.e. Reynolds number $Re$ is lower than unity), hydrodynamics equations are reversible in time. To achieve…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2011-02-17 Michaël Garcia , Stefano Berti , Philippe Peyla , Salima Rafaï

Chiral active Brownian particles (CABPs) are self-propelled agents with intrinsic rotational dynamics, giving rise to circular trajectories commonly observed in biological and synthetic microswimmers. Understanding how CABPs explore…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2026-05-25 Sarafa A. Iyaniwura , Mingfeng Qiu , Zhiwei Peng

We investigate dynamics of activated escape in periodically modulated systems. The trajectories followed in escape form diffusion broadened tubes, which are periodically repeated in time. We show that these tubes can be directly observed…

Statistical Mechanics · Physics 2009-11-11 D. Ryvkine , M. I. Dykman

Understanding the spread of infectious diseases requires integrating movement, physical constraints, and spatial configurations into epidemiological models. In this study, we investigate how particle diffusivity, hardcore interactions, and…

Other Condensed Matter · Physics 2025-06-17 Kaito Takahashi , Makiko Sasada , Takuma Akimoto

Cellular networks are often composed of thin tubules connecting much larger node compartments. These structures serve for active or diffusion transport of proteins. Examples are glial networks in the brain, the endoplasmic reticulum in…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2024-07-31 Frédéric Paquin-Lefebvre , Kanishka Basnayake , David Holcman

Biological active materials such as bacterial biofilms and eukaryotic cells thrive in confined micro-spaces. Here, we show through numerical simulations that confinement can serve as a mechanical guidance to achieve distinct modes of…

Soft Condensed Matter · Physics 2019-08-05 Felix Kempf , Romain Mueller , Erwin Frey , Julia M. Yeomans , Amin Doostmohammadi

When a flux of Brownian particles is injected in a narrow window located on the surface of a bounded domain, these particles diffuse and can eventually escape through a cluster of narrow windows. At steady-state, we compute asymptotically…

Analysis of PDEs · Mathematics 2024-07-31 Frédéric Paquin-Lefebvre , David Holcman