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From bacteria and sperm cells to artificial microrobots, self-propelled microscopic objects at low Reynolds numbers often perceive fluctuating mechanical and chemical stimuli and contact exterior wall boundaries both in nature and the…
Geometric confinements are frequently encountered in the biological world and strongly affect the stability, topology, and transport properties of active suspensions in viscous flow. Based on a far-field analytical model, the…
The trajectories of microswimmers moving in narrow channels of widths comparable to their sizes are significantly altered when they encounter another microswimmer moving in the opposite direction. The consequence of these encounters is a…
E. coli bacteria swim following a run and tumble pattern. In the run state all flagella join in a single helical bundle that propels the cell body along approximately straight paths. When one or more flagellar motors reverse direction the…
Self-propelled colloids (swimmers) in confining geometries follow trajectories determined by hydrodynamic interactions with the bounding surfaces. However, typically these interactions are ignored or truncated to lowest order. We…
The problem of transport through nanochannels is one of the major questions in cell biology, with a wide range of applications. Brownian ratchets are fundamental in various biochemical processes, and are roughly divided into two categories:…
The propulsion of mammalian spermatozoa relies on the spontaneous periodic oscillation of their flagella. These oscillations are driven internally by the coordinated action of ATP-powered dynein motors that exert sliding forces between…
Many self-propelled microorganisms are attracted to surfaces. This makes their dynamics in restricted geometries very different from that observed in the bulk. Swimming along walls is beneficial for directing and sorting cells, but may be…
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…
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…
Active matter exhibits various forms of non-equilibrium states in the absence of external forcing, including macroscopic steady-state currents. Such states are often too complex to be modelled from first principles and our understanding of…
Motivated by the desire to understand complex transient behaviour in fluid flows, we study the dynamics of an air bubble driven by the steady motion of a suspending viscous fluid within a Hele-Shaw channel with a centred depth perturbation.…
Despite their importance in many biological, ecological and physical processes, microorganismal fluid flows under tight confinement have not been investigated experimentally. Strong screening of Stokelets in this geometry suggests that the…
Differently from passive Brownian particles, active particles, also known as self-propelled Brownian particles or microswimmers and nanoswimmers, are capable of taking up energy from their environment and converting it into directed motion.…
Interactions between microorganisms and their complex flowing environments are essential in many biological systems. We develop a model for microswimmer dynamics in non-Newtonian Poiseuille flows. We predict that swimmers in…
We numerically investigate the hydrodynamics and membrane dynamics of multicomponent vesicles in two strongly confined geometries. This serves as a simplified model for red blood cells undergoing large deformations while traversing narrow…
Brownian motion is widely used as a paradigmatic model of diffusion in equilibrium media throughout the physical, chemical, and biological sciences. However, many real world systems, particularly biological ones, are intrinsically…
The unicellular microalga Chlamydomonas reinhardtii is widely recognized as a premier model living microswimmer for physicists and biophysicists. However, the interest around C. reinhardtii goes beyond its swimming capabilities. In fact,…
Microorganisms such as bacteria often swim in fluid environments that cannot be classified as Newtonian. Many biological fluids contain polymers or other heterogeneities which may yield complex rheology. For a given set of boundary…
Cilia and flagella are actively bending slender organelles, performing functions such as motility, feeding and embryonic symmetry breaking. We review the mechanics of viscous-dominated microscale flow, including time-reversal symmetry, drag…