Related papers: Stochastic nanoswimmer: a multistate model for enz…
Microorganisms often encounter anisotropy, for example in mucus and biofilms. We study how anisotropy and elasticity of the ambient fluid affects the speed of a swimming microorganism with a prescribed stroke. Motivated by recent…
In many physical systems, degrees of freedom are coupled \emph{via} hydrodynamic forces, even in the absence of Hamiltonian interactions. A particularly important and widespread example concerns the transport of microscopic particles in…
We examine the stochastic dynamics of two enzymes that are mechanically coupled to each other, e.g., through an elastic substrate or a fluid medium. The enzymes undergo conformational changes during their catalytic cycle, which itself is…
We numerically investigate the motion of active artificial microswimmers diffusing in a fuel concentration gradient. We observe that, in the steady state, their probability density accumulates in the low-concentration regions, whereas a…
In the present work we simulate the basic two-dimensional dynamics of swarming E. coli bacteria on the surface of a moderately soft agar plate. Individual bacteria are modelled by self-propelled ridged bodies (agents), which interact with…
Living systems at the sub-cellular, cellular, and multi-cellular level are often crowded systems that contain active particles. The active motion of these particles can also propel passive particles, which typically results in enhanced…
Experimental studies of the diffusion of biomolecules in the environment of biological cells are routinely confronted with multiple sources of stochasticity, whose identification renders the detailed data analysis of single molecule…
Mixed-substrate microbial growth is among the most intensely studied systems in molecular microbiology. Several mathematical models have been developed to account for the genetic regulation of such systems, especially those resulting in…
Particles with ligand-receptor contacts bind and unbind fluctuating "legs" to surfaces, whose fluctuations cause the particle to diffuse. Quantifying the diffusion of such "nanoscale caterpillars" is a challenge, since binding events often…
We theoretically study a nanospaser system, which consists of a spherical silver nanoparticle embedded inside a sphere composed of dye molecules. The gain of the system, dye molecules, are described by a three-level model, where the…
Molecular dynamics simulations are used to study the behavior of closely-fitting spherical and ellipsoidal particles moving through a fluid-filled cylinder at nanometer scales. The particle, the cylinder wall and the fluid solvent are all…
Active droplets can swim spontaneously in viscous flows as a result of the non-linear convective transport of a chemical solute produced at their surface by the Marangoni and/or phoretic flows generated by this solute's inhomogeneous…
The dynamic behavior of a partially wetting polymer droplet driven over a nanostructured interface is studied using molecular dynamics simulations. We consider the bead-spring model to represent a polymeric liquid that partially wets a…
Biological molecular motors are high-performance nanomachines that convert chemical energy into mechanical motion via chemomechanical coupling. Their reaction cycles typically comprise a series of intermediate chemical states between the…
We investigate how shear influences the dynamics of active particles in dilute to concentrated suspensions. Using apolar active suspensions of squirmers as model systems, we show how their long-time diffusive dynamics can surprisingly slow…
In this theoretical and numerical study, we show how spatially extended fluctuations can influence and dominate the dynamics of a fluid filled elastic blister as is deforms onto a pre-wetted solid substrate. To describe the blister…
The generation of fluid flows by autophoretic microswimmers has been proposed as a mechanism to enhance mass transport and mixing at the micro- and nanoscale. Here, we experimentally investigate the ability of model 2-D "active baths" of…
At the macroscopic scale, many important models of collective motion fall into the class of kinematic flows for which both velocity and diffusion terms depend only on particle density. When total particle numbers are fixed and finite,…
In many-particle diffusions, particles that move the furthest and fastest can play an outsized role in physical phenomena. A theoretical understanding of the behavior of such extreme particles is nascent. A classical model, in the spirit of…
In the presence of a chemically active particle, a nearby chemically inert particle can respond to a concentration gradient and move by diffusiophoresis. The nature of the motion is studied for two cases: first, a fixed reactive sphere and…