Related papers: Light-induced Non-uniform Surface Polarization Evo…
Living microorganisms are capable of a tactic response to external stimuli by swimming towards or away from the stimulus source; they do so by adapting their tactic signal transduction pathways to the environment. Their self-motility thus…
We study the motion of a microscopic swimmer composed of a semiflexible polymer anchored at the surface of a magnetic sphere using hydrodynamic simulations and scaling arguments. The swimmer is driven by a rotating magnetic field, and…
We consider the origin of unpolarised light resulting from the backscattering of circularly polarized light by random turbid tissue-like disperse medium. We reveal the dynamics of the backscattered fraction of unpolarized light, disclosing…
We study an active matter system comprised of magnetic microswimmers confined in a microfluidic channel and show that it exhibits a new type of self-organized behavior. Combining analytical techniques and Brownian dynamics simulations, we…
Microscale transport often relies on ubiquitous yet intrinsically random thermal fluctuations. Understanding how such fluctuations can be biased into directed motion has long been a central theme of nonequilibrium physics. Here, we…
We introduce a new class of optical micromotors driven by the spin-orbit interaction of light and spin-driven fluid flows leading to simultaneous rotation and revolution of the micromotors. The micromotors are essentially birefringent…
We present a detailed theoretical study which demonstrates that electrokinetic effects can also play a role in the motion of metallic-insulator spherical Janus particles. Essential to our analysis is the identification of the fact that the…
Active systems contain self-propelled particles and can spontaneously self-organize into patterns making them attractive candidates for the self-assembly of smart soft materials. One key limitation of our present understanding of these…
The diffusion of active microscopic organisms in complex environments plays an important role in a wide range of biological phenomena from cell colony growth to single organism transport. Here, we investigate theoretically and…
The current study presents a systematic investigation of the locomotion performance of a swimmer with a wide range of parameter settings. Two-dimensional simulations with the immersed boundary method are employed for the fluid-structure…
We experimentally study the motion of light-activated colloidal microswimmers in a viscoelastic fluid. We find that, in such a non-Newtonian environment, the active colloids undergo an unexpected transition from enhanced angular diffusion…
We present a detailed numerical study of a microscopic artificial swimmer realized recently by Dreyfus et al. in experiments [R. Dreyfus et al., Nature 437, 862 (2005)]. It consists of an elastic filament composed of superparamagnetic…
Downsizing microswimmers to the nanoscale, and using light as an externally controlled fuel, are two important goals within the field of active matter. Here we demonstrate using all-atom molecular dynamics simulations that solvation…
Cell crawling crucially depends on the collective dynamics of the acto-myosin cytoskeleton. However, it remains an open question to what extent cell polarization and persistent motion depend on continuous regulatory mechanisms and…
We show that activity and broken fore-aft shape symmetry enable microswimmers to cross streamlines in nonuniform shear, a key yet overlooked factor in active cross-stream migration. Using a model of flagellated microswimmers in microchannel…
Interfacial polar molecules feature a strongly anisotropic response to applied electric field, favoring dipole orientations parallel to the interface. In water, in particular, this effect combines with generic orientational preferences…
In nature, many unicellular organisms are able to swim with the help of beating filaments, where local energy input leads to cooperative undulatory beating motion. Here, we investigate by employing reinforcement learning how undulatory…
We study the spontaneous motion, binary collisions, and collective dynamics of "polar disks", i.e. purpose-built particles which, when vibrated between two horizontal plates, move coherently along a direction strongly correlated to their…
In biological systems, microswimmers often propel themselves through complex media. However, many aspects of swimming mechanisms in non-Newtonian fluids remain unclear. This study considers the propulsion of two types of single spherical…
Many fascinating properties of biological active matter crucially depend on the capacity of constituting entities to perform directed motion, e.g., molecular motors transporting vesicles inside cells or bacteria searching for food. While…