No Arabic abstract
We study the dynamics and interaction of two swimming bacteria, modeled by self-propelled dumbbell-type structures. We focus on alignment dynamics of a coplanar pair of elongated swimmers, which propel themselves either by pushing or pulling both in three- and quasi-two-dimensional geometries of space. We derive asymptotic expressions for the dynamics of the pair, which, complemented by numerical experiments, indicate that the tendency of bacteria to swim in or swim off depends strongly on the position of the propulsion force. In particular, we observe that positioning of the effective propulsion force inside the dumbbell results in qualitative agreement with the dynamics observed in experiments, such as mutual alignment of converging bacteria.
Active matter exhibits remarkable collective behavior in which flows, continuously generated by active particles, are intertwined with the orientational order of these particles. The relationship remains poorly understood as the activity and order are difficult to control independently. Here we demonstrate important facets of this interplay by exploring dynamics of swimming bacteria in a liquid crystalline environment with pre-designed periodic splay and bend in molecular orientation. The bacteria are expelled from the bend regions and condense into polar jets that propagate and transport cargo unidirectionally along the splay regions. The bacterial jets remain stable even when the local concentration exceeds the threshold of bending instability in a non-patterned system. Collective polar propulsion and different role of bend and splay are explained by an advection-diffusion model and by numerical simulations that treat the system as a two-phase active nematic. The ability of prepatterned liquid crystalline medium to streamline the chaotic movements of swimming bacteria into polar jets that can carry cargo along a predesigned trajectory opens the door for potential applications in cell sorting, microscale delivery and soft microrobotics.
We present a new hydrodynamic model for synchronization phenomena which is a type of pressureless Euler system with nonlocal interaction forces. This system can be formally derived from the Kuramoto model with inertia, which is a classical model of interacting phase oscillators widely used to investigate synchronization phenomena, through a kinetic description under the mono-kinetic closure assumption. For the proposed system, we first establish local-in-time existence and uniqueness of classical solutions. For the case of identical natural frequencies, we provide synchronization estimates under suitable assumptions on the initial configurations. We also analyze critical thresholds leading to finite-time blow-up or global-in-time existence of classical solutions. In particular, our proposed model exhibits the finite-time blow-up phenomenon, which is not observed in the classical Kuramoto models, even with a smooth distribution function for natural frequencies. Finally, we numerically investigate synchronization, finite-time blow-up, phase transitions, and hysteresis phenomena.
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 it stops swimming while remaining free to move laterally along the surface. In this bound state, the cell rotates perpendicular to the surface with its flagella pointing away from it. Using numerical simulations and theoretical analysis, we demonstrate the existence of a fluid-structure interaction instability that causes cells with relatively short flagella to become surface bound.
We study a PDE system describing the motion of liquid crystals by means of the $Q-$tensor description for the crystals coupled with the incompressible Navier-Stokes system. Using the method of Fourier splitting, we show that solutions of the system tend to the isotropic state at the rate $(1 + t)^{-3/2}$ as $t to infty$.
The spherical alga Volvox swims by means of flagella on thousands of surface somatic cells. This geometry and its large size make it a model organism for studying the fluid dynamics of multicellularity. Remarkably, when two nearby Volvox swim close to a solid surface, they attract one another and can form stable bound states in which they waltz or minuet around each other. A surface-mediated hydrodynamic attraction combined with lubrication forces between spinning, bottom-heavy Volvox explains the formation, stability and dynamics of the bound states. These phenomena are suggested to underlie observed clustering of Volvox at surfaces.