Related papers: Confinement reduces surface accumulation of swimmi…

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…

Numerous studies have explored the link between bacterial swimming and the number of flagella, a distinguishing feature of motile multiflagellated bacteria. We revisit this open question using augmented slender-body theory simulations, in…

Run-and-tumble is a common but vital strategy that bacteria employ to explore environment suffused with boundaries, as well as to escape from entrapment. In this study we reveal how this strategy and the resulting dynamical behavior can be…

We consider the sedimentation of a colloidal gel under confinement in the direction of gravity. The confinement allows us to compare directly experiments and computer simulations, for the same system size in the vertical direction. The…

The spreading of bacterial populations is central to processes in agriculture, the environment, and medicine. However, existing models of spreading typically focus on cells in unconfined settings--despite the fact that many bacteria inhabit…

Bacterial processes ranging from gene expression to motility and biofilm formation are constantly challenged by internal and external noise. While the importance of stochastic fluctuations has been appreciated for chemotaxis, it is…

This article gives an overview of recent theoretical and experimental findings concerning the hydrodynamic interaction between liquid-embedded particles in various confined geometries. A simple unifying description emerges, which accounts…

It is well known that flagellated bacteria swim in circles near surfaces. However, recent experiments have shown that a sulfide-oxidizing bacterium named Thiovulum majus can transition from swimming in circles to a surface bound state where…

The hydrodynamic interactions among bacterial cell bodies, flagella, and surrounding boundaries are essential for understanding bacterial motility in complex environments. In this study, we demonstrate that each slender flagellum can be…

Confinement between two parallel surfaces is found, theoretically and experimentally, to drastically affect the hydrodynamic interaction between colloid particles, changing the sign of the coupling, its decay with distance and its…

Microswimmers and active colloids often move in confined systems, including those involving interfaces. Such interfaces, especially at the microscale, may deform in response to the stresses of the flow created by the active particle. We…

Confinement can significantly alter fluid properties, offering potential for specific technological applications. However, achieving precise control over the structural complexity of confined fluids and soft matter remains challenging, as…

Bacteria often traverse confined spaces to perform critical functions in symbiosis, infection, drug delivery, and soil bioremediation. While the canonical run-and-tumble strategy enables exploration, its reliance on constant sensing and…

{\it E. coli} bacteria swim in straight runs interrupted by sudden reorientation events called tumbles. The resulting random walks give rise to density fluctuations that can be derived analytically in the limit of non interacting particles…

Colloidal inclusions suspended in a bath of smaller particles experience an effective bath-mediated attraction at small intersurface separations, which is known as the depletion interaction. In an active bath of nonchiral self-propelled…

The entrapment of bacteria near boundary surfaces is of biological and practical importance, yet the underlying physics is still not well understood. We demonstrate that it is crucial to include a commonly neglected entropic effect arising…

Chemically active Janus particles generate tangential concentration gradients along their surface for self-propulsion. Although this is well studied in unbounded domains, the analysis in biologically relevant environments such as…

Low Reynolds number direct simulations of large populations of hydrodynamically interacting swimming particles confined between planar walls are performed. The results of simulations are compared with a theory that describes dilute…

After colliding with a surface, microswimmers reside there during the detention time. They accumulate and may form complex structures such as biofilms. We introduce a general framework to calculate the distribution of detention times using…

The natural habitats of microorganisms in the human microbiome and ocean and soil ecosystems are full of colloids and macromolecules, which impart non-Newtonian flow properties drastically affecting the locomotion of swimming…