Related papers: Swimming Efficiently by Wrapping
Active droplets are artificial microswimmers built from a liquid dispersion by microfluidic tools and showing self-propelled motion. These systems hold particular interest for mimicking biological phenomena, such as some aspects of cell…
We study catalytic Janus swimmers and Escherichia coli bacteria swimming in a two-dimensional colloidal crystal. The Janus swimmers orbit individual colloids and hop between colloids stochastically, with a hopping rate that varies inversely…
We study the transport of bacteria in a porous media modeled by a square channel containing one cylindrical obstacle via molecular dynamics simulations coupled to a lattice Boltzmann fluid. Our bacteria model is a rod-shaped rigid body…
Confining surfaces play crucial roles in dynamics, transport and order in many physical systems, but their effects on active matter, a broad class of dynamically self-organizing systems, are poorly understood. We investigate here the…
Microswimmers exhibit more diverse behavior in quasi-two dimensions than in three dimensions. Such behavior remains elusive due to the analytical difficulty of dealing with two parallel solid boundaries. The existence of additional…
Systems of self-propelled particles are known for their tendency to aggregate and to display swarm behavior. We investigate two model systems, self-propelled rods interacting via volume exclusion, and sinusoidally-beating flagella embedded…
Large scale molecular dynamics simulations are used to investigate the structural and dynamical modifications of supercooled water when confined inside an hydrophilic nanopore. We then investigate the evolution of the auto-organization of…
Biological and artificial microswimmers often self-propel in external flows of vortical nature; relevant examples include algae in small-scale ocean eddies, spermatozoa in uterine peristaltic flows and bacteria in microfluidic devices. A…
Microorganisms swimming through viscous fluids imprint their propulsion mechanisms in the flow fields they generate. Extreme confinement of these swimmers between rigid boundaries often arises in natural and technological contexts, yet…
The run-and-tumble dynamics of bacteria, as exhibited by \textit{E. coli}, offers a simple experimental realization of non-Brownian, yet diffusive, particles. Here we present some analytic and numerical results for models of the ideal…
Ciliated microswimmers and flagellated bacteria alter their swimming trajectories to follow the direction of an applied electric field exhibiting electrotaxis. Both for matters of application and physical modelling, it is instructive to…
Escherichia coli and other bacteria use rotating helical filaments to swim. Each cell typically has about four filaments, which bundle or disperse depending on the sense of motor rotation. To study the bundling process, we built a…
We present theory and experiments demonstrating the existence of invariant manifolds that impede the motion of microswimmers in two-dimensional fluid flows. One-way barriers are apparent in a hyperbolic fluid flow that block the swimming of…
It is widely believed that the swimming speed, $v$, of many flagellated bacteria is a non-monotonic function of the concentration, $c$, of high-molecular-weight linear polymers in aqueous solution, showing peaked $v(c)$ curves. Pores in the…
The flexibility of the bacterial flagellar hook is believed to have substantial consequences for microorganism locomotion. Using a simplified model of a rigid flagellum and a flexible hook, we show that the paths of axisymmetric cell bodies…
Trypanosoma brucei (T. brucei), a single-celled parasite and natural microswimmer, is responsible for fatal sleeping sickness in infected mammals, including humans. Understanding how T. brucei interacts with fluid environments and navigates…
We simulate by lattice Boltzmann the nonequilibrium steady states of run-and-tumble particles (inspired by a minimal model of bacteria), interacting by far-field hydrodynamics, subject to confinement. Under gravity, hydrodynamic…
Using molecular dynamics simulations we study the slow dynamics of a hard sphere fluid confined in a disordered porous matrix. The presence of both discontinuous and continuous glass transitions as well as the complex interplay between…
In systems as diverse as migrating mammals to road traffic, crowding acts to inhibit efficient collective movement. Bacteria, however, are observed to move in very dense groups containing billions of individuals without causing the gridlock…
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…