No Arabic abstract
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 to persistent rotational motion above a critical propulsion speed, despite their spherical shape and stiffness. We observe that, in contrast to chiral asymmetric microswimmers, the resulting circular orbits can spontaneously reverse their sense of rotation and exhibit an angular velocity and a radius of curvature that non-linearly depend on the propulsion speed. By means of a minimal non-Markovian Langevin model for active Brownian motion, we show that these non-equilibrium effects emerge from the delayed response of the fluid with respect to the self-propulsion of the particle without counterpart in Newtonian fluids.
The motion of self-propelled particles is modeled as a persistent random walk. An analytical framework is developed that allows the derivation of exact expressions for the time evolution of arbitrary moments of the persistent walks displacement. It is shown that the interplay of step length and turning angle distributions and self-propulsion produces various signs of anomalous diffusion at short time scales and asymptotically a normal diffusion behavior with a broad range of diffusion coefficients. The crossover from the anomalous short time behavior to the asymptotic diffusion regime is studied and the parameter dependencies of the crossover time are discussed. Higher moments of the displacement distribution are calculated and analytical expressions for the time evolution of the skewness and the kurtosis of the distribution are presented.
In a simple model of a continuous random walk a particle moves in one dimension with the velocity fluctuating between V and -V. If V is associated with the thermal velocity of a Brownian particle and allowed to be position dependent, the model accounts readily for the particles drift along the temperature gradient and recovers basic results of the conventional thermophoresis theory.
Given a random walk a method is presented to produce a matrix of transition probabilities that is consistent with that random walk. The method is a kind of reverse application of the usual ergodicity and is tested by using a transition matrix to produce a path and then using that path to create the estimate. The two matrices and their predictions are then compared. A variety of situations test the method, random matrices, metastable configurations (for which ergodicity often does not apply) and explicit violation of detailed balance.
The motion of an artificial micro-scale swimmer that uses a chemical reaction catalyzed on its own surface to achieve autonomous propulsion is fully characterized experimentally. It is shown that at short times, it has a substantial component of directed motion, with a velocity that depends on the concentration of fuel molecules. At longer times, the motion reverts to a random walk with a substantially enhanced diffusion coefficient. Our results suggest strategies for designing artificial chemotactic systems.
An experimental study of a granular surface submitted to a circular fluid motion is presented. The appearance of an instability along the sand-water interface is observed beyond a critical radius $r_c$. This creates ripples with a spiral shape on the granular surface. A phase diagram of such patterns is constructed and discussed as a function of the rotation speed $omega$ of the flow and as a function of the height of water $h$ above the surface. The study of $r_c$ as a function of $h$, $omega$ and $r$ parameters is reported. Thereafter, $r_c$ is shown to depend on the rotation speed according to a power law. The ripple wavelength is found to decrease when the rotation speed increases and is proportional to the radial distance $r$. The azimuthal angle az of the spiral arms is studied. It is found that az scales with $homega r$. This lead to the conclusion that az depends on the fluid momentum. Comparison with experiments performed with fluids allows us to state that the spiral patterns are not the signature of an instability of the boundary layer.