Related papers: Improving Hydrodynamic Modeling of Free-Swimming A…
Many microswimmers are able to swim through viscous fluids by employing periodic non-reciprocal deformations of their appendages. Here we use a simple microswimmer model inspired by swimming biflagellates which consists of a spherical cell…
The green alga {\it Chlamydomonas} swims with synchronized beating of its two flagella, and is experimentally observed to exhibit run-and-tumble behaviour similar to bacteria. Recently we studied a simple hydrodynamic three-sphere model of…
Run-and-tumble (RT) motion is commonly observed in flagellated microswimmers, arising from synchronous and asynchronous flagellar beating. One such example is a biflagellated alga, called \textit{Chlamydomonas reinhardtii}. Its flagellar…
Many biological microswimmers can modulate their swimming gait to achieve directional control of motility, especially when performing steering towards specific directional cues. This can be achieved without the need for obvious…
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,…
Eukaryotic swimming cells such as spermatozoa, algae or protozoa use flagella or cilia to move in viscous fluids. The motion of their flexible appendages in the surrounding fluid induces propulsive forces that balance with the viscous drag…
We propose minimal models of one-, two- and three-dimensional micro-swimmers at low Reynolds number with a periodic non-reciprocal motion. These swimmers are either "pushers" or "pullers" of fluid along the swimming axis, or combination of…
Micro-organisms propel themselves in viscous environments by the periodic, nonreciprocal beating of slender appendages known as flagella. Active materials have been widely exploited to mimic this form of locomotion. However, the realization…
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…
Many biological microorganisms and artificial microswimmers react to external cues of environmental gradients by changing their swimming directions. We study here the behavior of eukarytic flagellated microswimmers in linear viscosity…
The unicellular biflagellate green alga {\it Chlamydomonas reinhardtii} has been an important model system in biology for decades, and in recent years it has started to attract growing attention also within the biophysics community. Here we…
In a fluid environment, flagellated microswimmers propel themselves by rotating their flagella. The morphology of these flagella significantly influences forward speed, swimming efficiency, and directional stability, which are critical for…
Bacterial swimming is well characterized in uniform liquids at rest. The natural habitat of bacterial swimmers, however, is often dominated by moving fluids and interfaces, resulting in shear flows that may strongly alter bacterial…
We combine a general formulation of microswimmmer equations of motion with a numerical bead-shell model to calculate the hydrodynamic interactions with the fluid, from which the swimming speed, power and efficiency are extracted. From this…
Active fluids can develop spontaneous flow instabilities and complex patterns. However, spatio-temporal control of active particles has remained challenging, despite its relevance in biological and applied contexts. Here, we harnessed…
Most motile bacteria swim in viscous fluids by rotating multiple helical flagellar filaments. These semi-rigid filaments repeatedly join ('bundle') and separate ('unbundle'), resulting in a two-gait random walk-like motion of the cell. In…
A flagellated bacterium navigates fluid environments by rotating its helical flagellar bundle. The wobbling of the bacterial body significantly influences its swimming behavior. To quantify the three underlying motions--precession,…
The unicellular green algae Chlamydomonas swims with two flagella, which can synchronize their beat. Synchronized beating is required to swim both fast and straight. A long-standing hypothesis proposes that synchronization of flagella…
Suspensions of motile microorganisms can spontaneously form large-scale fluid motion, known as bioconvection, characterized by dense downwelling plumes separated by broad upwelling regions. In this study, we investigate bioconvection in…
Microorganisms such as algae and bacteria move in a viscous environment with extremely low Reynolds ($Re$), where the viscous drag dominates the inertial forces. They have adapted to this environment by developing specialized features such…