Related papers: Swimmers at Interfaces Enhance Interfacial Transpo…
We investigate the effects of heterogeneous (spatially varying) activity in a hydrodynamical model for dense bacterial suspensions, confining ourselves to experimentally realizable, simple, quenched, activity patterns. We show that the…
We study the orientational and translational dynamics of spherical microswimmers trapped at fluid interfaces, in terms of the force dipole and source dipole components of their flow field. Using numerical simulations and analytical…
The hydrodynamics of a flagellated microorganism is investigated when swimming close to a planar free-slip surface by means of numerical solu- tions of the Stokes equations obtained via a Boundary Element Method. Depending on the initial…
Flagellar-driven locomotion plays a critical role in bacterial attachment and colonization of surfaces, contributing to the risks of contamination and infection. Tremendous attempts to uncover the underlying principles governing bacterial…
An accurate description of the structure and dynamics of interfacial water is essential for phospholipid membranes, since it determines their function and their interaction with other molecules. Here we consider water confined in stacked…
Several micro-organisms, such as bacteria, algae, or spermatozoa, use flagella or cilia to swim in a fluid, while many other micro-organisms instead use ample shape deformation, described as amoeboid, to propel themselves by either crawling…
Deformable boundaries are omnipresent in the habitats of swimming microorganisms, leading to intricate hydroelastic couplings. Employing a perturbation theory, valid for small deformations, we study the swimming dynamics of pushers and…
Many microorganisms live and evolve in complex fluids. Examples include mammalian spermatozoa in cervical mucus, worms (e.g., \textit{C. elegans}) in wet soil, and bacteria (e.g., \textit{H. pylori}) in our stomach lining. Due to the…
In the study of microscopic flows, self-propulsion has been particularly topical in recent years, with the rise of miniature artificial swimmers as a new tool for flow control, low Reynolds number mixing, micromanipulation or even drug…
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…
In addition to enabling movement towards environments with favourable living conditions, swimming by microorganisms has also been linked to enhanced mixing and improved nutrient uptake by their populations. Experimental studies have shown…
Suspensions of swimming micro-organisms are known to undergo intricate collective dynamics as a result of hydrodynamic and collision interactions. Micro-swimmers, such as bacteria and micro-algae, naturally live and have evolved in complex…
The physical mechanism of microbial motion near solid-liquid interfaces is crucial for understanding various biological phenomena and developing ecological applications. However, limited works have been conducted on the swimming behavior of…
Bacteria at fluid interfaces endure physical and chemical stresses unique to these highly asymmetric environments. The responses of Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 and PA14 to a hexadecane-water interface are compared. PAO1 cells form elastic…
Microorganisms navigate through fluid, often confined by complex environments, to survive and sustain life. Inspired by this fact, we consider a model system and seek to understand the wall curvature driven dynamics of a squirmer, a…
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…
Single flagellated bacteria are ubiquitous in nature. They exhibit various swimming modes using their flagella to explore complex surroundings such as soil and porous polymer networks. Some single-flagellated bacteria swim with two distinct…
We study the trajectories of a model microorganism inside three-dimensional channels with square and rectangular cross-sections. Using (i) numerical simulations based on lattice-Boltzmann method, and (ii) analytical expressions using…
Geometric confinement plays an important role in the dynamics of natural and synthetic microswimmers from bacterial cells to self-propelled particles in high-throughput microfluidic devices. However, little is known about the effects of…
We investigate the effects of bacterial activity on the mixing and transport properties of a passive scalar in time-periodic flows in experiments and in a simple model. We focus on the interactions between swimming E. coli and the…